How to cope with your girlfriend becoming immortal in three easy steps
This is a part of my whitepine x vampires au, but is set ninety years before the start of the au. Think of this as a prequel to those fics.
Apo has been living with Cherri for ten years now, and she hasn't aged a day. Cherri has, not noticeably at first, but she has crows feet at the corners of her eyes now, and a slight wrinkle between her eyes. She frowns when she paints, and smiles at almost every other moment.
Apo adores it.
She loves how her sweetheart has aged, even if she can't age alongside her. She loves watching her wake up slowly, her nose crinkling against the cold air, her eyelashes slowly separating. Apo could watch her forever.
It has been almost ten years to the day since she escaped Oakhurst. She knows that Abolish had been keeping an eye on her - always at a distance, always briefly. Once every six months or so she will catch a glimpse of him, and then he'll be gone - but she hasn't seen hide nor hair of the others.
And she wants to keep it that way.
Cherri knows her struggles with this date. She knows what Apo went through. The letters got through to her, the frantic warning the only beat her home by a single day. The frozen, bitter grief that consumes her for weeks on end, culminating on a day where she can barely move, curled in their bed.
Cherri never stays on this day.
Instead, she goes and collects gifts for Apo. A necklace, a shiny rock from a creek, an iris for the garden, some hair ornaments, and noticeably two years ago, a brittany spaniel that she can take on hunts with her.
She named him Martyn on the day, but Cherri calls him Marty.
Apo thinks he would hate that. She hopes he doesn't.
Marty lies on the bed, his little head resting on her chest as she forces her lungs to breath. She doesn't need to draw breath - not anymore - but she enjoys the sensation on this awful anniversary. It reminds her of why she can't go back. Of why she won't go back.
The midday sun pushes through an unseasonable warmth through her windows. She could move to open them, to let some cold air in. She could move to push the quilt from on top of her. But that would disturb Marty. It would disturb Cherri's lovingly placed blankets.
So when the door to their cottage slams open hard enough to rattle the windows, Apo can honestly say she's more upset about startling her dog than she is about the fact that she is going to kill someone.
Apo rises slowly, smoothing the front of her shift as she rises. She likes this one - a silk shift that Cherri had embroidered her name onto, just above her heart. Apo doesn't want to get it bloodied, getting blood out of silk is exhausting work, but she will do what she must.
She stalks out of the bedroom, her feet silent as she glides in the shadows of the small house. She will deal with this intruder, and will ensure her lovers safety. But she freezes in the edge of the hall, taking in the scene in front of her.
Abolish, hunched over Cherri, desperately shaking her. He has always been so put together, the almost feral nature of his movements give her more than just pause - it gives her abject fear. Her heart does not pound - it hasn't moved in ten years - but she swears it stops still in this instant.
Her lovers heart still beats, but she does not move.
"I'm so sorry." Abolish is desperate, looking up at her with tears in his eyes. "I was too late I'm sorry."
And that is all that it takes.
Apo is by her side in a second, her hands clenched around one of Cherris. As though she can bring her back with a squeeze and a prayer. As though anything she can do will save her.
"What happened?" Her voice is broken, but she still places her head on Cherri's chest. Abolish hesitates, and Apo looks up at him.
He's staring at her hand, sizzling in the sunlight.
"She was in the market." He stands slowly, shutting the door with more care than when he broke it open. It won't take her too long to fix the cracks in the mortar and lime, as long as the weather permits her working. "I had been sent to find someone, who had been cursing people who crossed them."
"A witch?" Apo still cannot believe that magic is real, even having lived through what she had. But Abolish just shakes his head.
"A fairy." His nose scrunches in clear distaste, and Apo almost wants to smile at him. "Vicious thing, has been cursing people since Shakespeare."
"Like Puck." Cherri's voice is weak, but she Apo shoots up to look at her, she has a smile on her face. As always. "Good to see you, Apo-slice."
"You look so-" Apo wants to weep, to bury her head in Cherri's chest and never move again.
"I'm alright. Talked to the wrong person, though."
"I'm sorry." Abolish repeats himself, and Cherri laughs at him - not maliciously, at least Apo can tell that.
"You didn't curse me. What did you expect to do, kill the fairy. I will be fine."
"I don't know what the curse has done to you." He says slowly.
"I know."
"I don't know how to help you."
"That's fine." Apo is torn between laughing at Abolish's frankly tired expression, and curling around Cherri and never letting go again. "Really, Mr-"
"Veylocke."
"Veylocke, this is not your fault. I know what they told me, and I know I can work with it. Please don't worry about me, I'm sure you have to go and catch that fairy before they curse anyone else?"
Abolish looks live a wave of ice just dragged him under, but he nods in agreement.
"Thank you, Abolish." Apo allows herself this one moment, just before he leaves. "For everything."
"I wish you could have been cured, too." He nods, disappearing out the door.
"I knew you two knew each other. You've mentioned Veylocke before." Cherri cards her fingers through Apo's hair, and Marty trots out to rest his head on her lap. "You don't have to worry about me, I honestly got a pretty good deal."
"Cherri," Apo hisses, and Marty whines at her tone. Cherri just laughs, pulling her close.
"They cursed me to only live as long as my lover walks the earth. I think they thought you dead, dearest, because they were so shocked when I did not drop dead before them."
Apo wants to laugh, wants to smile and pull Cherri into a tight hug. She wants to dance around the cottage with her lover, now that she knows she will have eternity and a day to spend with her. Now that she knows she will not outlive her, slowly forgetting her face and voice.
Instead, she bursts into tears.
Cherri pulls her close, tucking her into her chest as she fights through sobs. Marty, ever like his name sake, huffs with exasperation before leaving to go and stand by the door. Guarding them.
---
Five years have passed, and Cherri has not aged a day. Still in her mid thirties, still with the same laughter lines and furrow in her brow. Still as radiant as the sun, and as brilliant as the moon.
Apo is doing better, on this anniversary. Cherri says she has slowly been getting better, each year from the start, but Apo doubts that.
She is running through the woods, the night so new the sky still holds the last vestiages of pink and purple in the sky. Her feet are so light under her, she might as well be flying. Marty bounds besides her, all flopping ears and shaking tail.
Tonight, they hunt pheasants for Cherri. She already has one under her belt, having scared it into Marty's capable jaws, but she needs another for her own dinner.
As much as she enjoys the smell, eating a stew would be a good way to make herself sick for the rest of the week, and Cherri has plans for them. Certainly just to see Abolish in the budding city of Emberton, but it counts.
She doesn't understand why Cherri insists on recalling what happened to her. If Apo were in her place, cursed to live for as long as Cherri lives, she would never think about it again. She would refuse to look a gift horse in the mouth.
But Cherri refuses to let it lie, and Apo refuses to let her face it alone.
Secretly, she hates it. Cherri shouldn't be tethered to her, should be able to live a natural life that she herself cannot. Apo wants to age, to grow old with her lover. To die in her sleep, in her arms. And now neither of them can have even that much.
Apo has four pheasants attached to her belt when she comes back to herself, feathers stuck in her teeth.
Maybe talking about it might help.
---
It has been twenty years since Apo left Oakhurst, and ten years since Cherri became immortal, and Apo is returning to Oakhurst with her lover.
If she were to tell herself she was doing this even two years ago, she would laugh in her own face. To travel back to the place that ruined her? To face the man she want to kill, more than she has ever wanted someone dead before? To finally pay her respects to her friends, to her enemies, and to the man she thought she could trust?
She never would have considered it.
But Abolish and Cherri had teamed up on her, using their combined powers for evil. Abolish has gotten Cleo and Pearl out of the village, sent them on to distract the shattered remnants of the coven. Mr M is nowhere to be found, as per usual.
And Apo is standing, with a bouquet of flowers and a pair of letters, above Martyn and Renheardt's graves.
"I don't know if I can say what I want to." She says finally, the moon full behind her. "I don't think I know how to. But I've written it down for you. I hope you both can read it."
Cherri is waiting for her, watching her with a warm smile. When Apo is done, she will take her hand and leave the town once more. She's visited Legundo, she's visited Pyro and Owen, she's even visited Avid- though she's left him no flowers, since he's clearly got too many already - and all she has to do is say goodbye to her militia.
And now she doesn't know how.
"I wanted to say something." Her voice wavers, bloodied tears pooling in her eyes. "I had planned it, Cherri had helped me with the words when I couldn't find them. But now I can't say it.
You were good." She finally pushes out. "You were perfect. I'm so sorry. I will stay for you. I don't know if anyone tells you about the world?"
Apo scrubs her eyes with the palm of her hand, smearing blood across her cheeks.
"But I promise I will come back with news. Abolish and Cherri said they'll help with that. I don't think I told you much about Cherri. You'd both like her. She's an artist." Apo doesn't shake as she sobs, the tears falling onto wet ground. "She's going to be with me for the rest of my life. She's immortal. Not a vampire, though. Something else. She's trying to paint you both."
Apo laughs slightly.
"She isn't there yet. She's getting close, though. I love her." Apo takes a deep breath in, smiling slightly at the two graves. "I'm going to marry her, one day. I'm going to ask her this year, but I'm going to marry her. I'll send you both invites and save you seats. I hope to see you there."
Apo leaves the cards at the base of the graves, and the flowers in between them. They can share them. She salutes the graves - the only military honours she can give them - before she walks towards Cherri.
She takes her hand, and they walk into the night.
