do they think that walls can hide you? even now I'm at your window --

[somuchsuffering]

Her arrival in Darrow was hardly -- Mina tells herself -- the strangest or most momentous thing ever to happen to her. Disorienting, yes; but temporary, it must be. She'll find her way home when she achieves whatever she's been sent here to do, and she's made the best start she can; found an empty storefront with a deep, quiet basement, and begun to build her lair about her. Even so: there's something not quite right, something hanging fire, and she knows too well what it is. The lost hold on Vanessa, the empty place inside her, waiting for the connection to be found.

In the daytime, it is, eventually; a ripple of awareness, a plucked string, a hook breaking the water and tugging her to the surface of her sleep. She knows three things all twined together before her eyes can open: Vanessa's in the city; the demon inside her has met something else beyond the natural; and Mina can chase her down at any time she likes.

She waits for night, at least. For Vanessa to be alone, before sending herself out -- white dress, the twin of the one she's abandoned, and she curls herself deeper into her own bedding as she opens her projected eyes and takes in the sight of Vanessa, all pale skin and dark hair in the faint orange glow of the streetlights.

Her heart, unbeating, seems to twist and shudder and thump beneath her ribs. Mine, mine, fair, perfectly pure and good --

She hardly needs intend the streetlights to spark and blow out, all up and down the block.

Comments

[cruel_spirit]

Vanessa sighs deeply as she blows out the last of the candles, preparing herself for yet another restless night in this godforsaken place. Sleep has not come easily or well to her since they'd arrived and even ridding herself of the electric lighting that stung her eyes hadn't done much to bring her comfort. This bed is not her own -- nor this room or this flat -- and she finds herself at a loss as to how to make it so. Everything she encounters, from the foods to the fabrics, is a discomfiting reminder of the alien nature of this world.

And then there are the people.

Strange creatures openly walk the streets of Darrow in broad daylight, and this frightens and disturbs her in ways that leave her unwilling to share the tales of her encounters with Sir Malcolm. There is too much danger there, too much temptation, and she can already feel the thing inside her twisting and shifting with its need.

Laying back against the overly plush pillows, Vanessa closes her eyes and prays that unconsciousness finds her quickly this night. But in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the world freezes on a held breath and it is all she can do to whisper, "Mina."

[somuchsuffering]

Oh; better than Mina would have dared dream, the lines of her, her voice, the way she lies fretful in her bed. It makes her fingertips itch, pressing into her palms for all her image remains doll-still and trembling.

"Vanessa," she says, soft and breathy, half-swallowed. Arrives at a stratagem hardly needing to think, and doesn't fight the smile that curls across her real, solid mouth. "Where have you gone? I have searched for you --"

She lets her eyes dart about the room, quick, shocked -- shocked as she is, not to say affronted, to see her Vanessa in such a context. The meanness of the place is hardly camouflaged in near-darkness, not to her eyes; and the restless ache of Vanessa in the back of her mind, even less so.

How perfect.

[cruel_spirit]

Vanessa reaches a hand toward her before her mind has even registered the movement. They have been caught in each other's gravity for as long as they have been, and it would seem neither time nor distance can serve to change that fact. Perhaps she should be shocked to see Mina here, but she also knows that would be a foolishness. This moment was inevitable. Their bond made it so.

"Please. Mina. Tell me you are truly here." Her voice is still a whisper but the words sound loud to her ears, magnified by the darkness, by the stillness of the air that surrounds them. "Tell me this isn't just a dream."

She already knows the answer, intimately familiar with the textures of this other world, this space between that allows them contact. But the pain of their parting is still too raw, too new, for her to leave anything unsaid between them. The words matter. "Say you're here with me."

[somuchsuffering]

"Always." Too quick, too honest; but she suspects Vanessa won't notice. "My sister, it was you who left me."

And that, she thinks, is not so untrue as it might be.

She takes a step closer, another, silent save for a creaking floorboard and the whispering shush of her skirts against the floor; simple enough, the trick of it, once she'd learned, and she stops just shy of Vanessa's reach.

Vanessa's pulse beats hard in her throat, perfectly visible, and Mina's mouth waters.

"I have searched for you," she whispers again, "so long. There is something beneath my skin that draws me to you, Vanessa, and yet I all but lost you."

[cruel_spirit]

"And I you, Mina mine. And I you. But we have found each other again, here in this time out of time, as I believe we always will."

Her fingers ache to touch, to hold the body in front of her, as familiar to her as her own, but fear keeps her still. Keeps her bound to this strange bed. It strikes her then that this apparition before her is more her real to her than anything in this alien city could ever be. That she would trade that world for this half-life with Mina in a heartbeat if she could. Perhaps that realization should frighten her, but it doesn't. She knows with a calm certainty and this place will never be her home -- not in any of the ways that matter. But here, in this moment, in this world between worlds, she still has a chance to save the one who holds her heart.

Then she remembers.

"Are you free of him, Mina? Or has he followed you here?"

[somuchsuffering]

Oh, and in her body Mina turns her head and laughs into the coils of her bedding; in the room she only trembles, hugs herself, her fingertips worrying at the lace of her sleeves. Sweet, and insulting, and useful that Vanessa is so willing to believe her in the thrall of a monster still -- Mina would never have doubted the tale's hold on Father, had she wanted him, but a part of her only wishes for Vanessa to see the truth of her through it.

Still. Still.

She pries her own hand free of her sleeve, reaches out to brush her fingers against Vanessa's. Ghost of a touch as it is, the spark of it races through her, crackles like touchpaper down every nerve; she wishes for breath to catch.

"Lost," and she slips a tremor into her voice just as easily as she slides their fingers together, intertwining them. "I think I shall never be free of him, until you find me."

[cruel_spirit]

Such longing for this moment and it nearly overwhelms her when it finally arrives, her heart aching in her chest for the feel of skin against skin. Her betrayal had cost her this, had shattered everything they were together and to one another, and despite Mina's pleas and her words of forgiveness, Vanessa had long since given up the hope that she might one day feel this again. This connection that goes beyond the physical.

Vanessa is well aware that the manipulations, of the secrets and lies they tell, of the constant threat the thing inside her presents. She understands the very real possibility that she is blinded to the truth of Mina's circumstance by the love she feels and the memories she holds most dear. She has come to accept the magnitude of what she may be forced to do to save her -- to save them both. But none of that can stop her from holding tight to Mina's hand, from pulling her in so that she might hold her closer still. Not when she's already lost so much. Not when she knows that no matter her true motives, Mina can't hurt her here, in this dreaming place they share.

No, here she can have what she most desires and it is a blessing she can not ignore. One that she knows she no longer deserves, if she ever did. "I will never stop searching for you, my darling Mina. Never."

[somuchsuffering]

"My Vanessa."

Mina lets her eyes fall half-lidded; hardly a lie, for all the deliberation behind it. Say rather, she thinks, an old truth -- a truth that might have been, in another country, when she held Vanessa's hand to her own beating heart and pretended to be asleep.

"So much braver than I."

Slowly, timidly, her own fingers clutching into her sheets with the impatient hunger of it, she raises their joined hands to her mouth. Kisses at the ridge of Vanessa's knuckles, soft, soft, hesitant, her heart remembering how it felt to race. She could bite, she knows, show Vanessa her true face and draw real blood with projected fangs. Could have her down in the bed in seconds, but she forces a shuddering breath instead, exhaling softly against Vanessa's skin.

[cruel_spirit]

It's as though time itself is holding its breath for how long the moment feels. Watching Mina's lips caressing her skin, feeling the touch, the tenderness of the gesture belied by the magnitude of its effect and the pounding of the blood in her veins. She looks at Mina with a question in her eyes -- a question she fears asking -- but it is too much to hope that she understands what is happening between them. That she is truly seeing her desire reflected back at her.

"Mina."

The name is a plea and a prayer and faith all at once, desperate as she is to not be wrong in this moment, to not be denied once again. Not with Mina's hand in hers and Mina's mouth on her skin, not when she has come this far. "Will you kiss me?"

[somuchsuffering]

Oh; all of Vanessa there in one moment, cracked tidily open like an eggshell, and if Mina were flesh and blood in the room with her --

It is, she thinks -- her mother's daughter, always counting up the scores, always knowing who could turn her weakness against her -- a great relief that she is not. Hunger lays her open, leaves her gasping with the memory of breathlessness; she widens her projection's eyes, makes it tremble faintly with hesitation, and every second is pure indulgent torture.

"Vanessa," she breathes, lets her breath catch, kisses her.

She can feel the heat of Vanessa's skin, taste her mouth, but cruelly muted by the distance between them; very nearly worse than nothing, but for the triumph of it, the victory that shudders her down to her bones.

[cruel_spirit]

Mina's skin is like silk beneath her fingertips, her hair softer still, and it is all Vanessa can do not to let herself drown in the sensations. She wants to be present, wants to feel everything, remember everything of this stolen moment she's waited a lifetime for.

This kiss she traded her soul for.

And in the space between one world and the next, with Mina's lips against hers, Vanessa can almost believe it was a fair price to pay, almost believe she would make the same choice again for the chance to have her. So she deepens the kiss, needing more -- everything -- for she dares not hope they will have this chance again, and if the gift of this night is all she can ever have of Mina she intends to burn the memory of it into every inch of them both.

[somuchsuffering]

Mina, in her bed, shudders.

Desire knifes into her, makes her curl into herself and grip the bedclothes in her fists -- to go to Vanessa in her flesh, she thinks, to pin her down, open her and open her and taste her blood as she comes --

She makes herself sigh against Vanessa's mouth, open to her, trail cool fingers tentatively along her cheek. The heat of her, even diffused; "Vanessa," soft, breathy. "How sweet you are. I never dared --"

And for that lie alone she'd once have believed herself damned.

[cruel_spirit]

"-- then I should have."

She holds Mina close, licking the words from her lips, sharing her breath. That this has always been inevitable is something she can't deny now and she feels a fool for having wasted so many years, for having let so many opportunities slip away from them. Vanessa wonders how much suffering could have been averted if she'd been as bold as she always believed herself to be, or perhaps it would have changed nothing at all except in the specifics of her agony at their separation.

"I should have been brave enough for both of us, my Mina." And so she tries to be now as she pulls her closer, hand on her waist, sliding down to her hip, remembering every line of a body she's always known.

[somuchsuffering]

The tease of it, the ghost-touch of hands on flesh that isn't quite hers; Mina all but screams into her sheets, half-mad with the injustice. To have Vanessa hers, finally and purely hers, and not to touch --

The ghost of her leans into Vanessa's hands, slow and trembling, lets Vanessa kiss her slow and sweet. Opens to it, hesitant, quite as though she'd never thought of tangling her hands through Vanessa's hair and biting at her lip until she bled.

"My Vanessa," and she thinks, she's almost certain, that she keeps the cutting edge from her voice. "Will you show me, now? I -- I do so love you."

The truth that makes the lie, and she can all but taste Vanessa's mouth against hers.

[cruel_spirit]

Another kiss, deeper this time, hands tangled in Mina's hair and in the fabric of her dress. Vanessa could lose herself in the taste of her, in the feel of her, and she wonders for the briefest of moments if she wouldn't welcome that end.

When her breath is gone she moves back, but only so far that she can meet Mina's eyes and she says "yes." Burns the word into Mina's lips as she takes her hand and pulls her closer, leading her down onto the bed beside her. Fingertips skimming along Mina's neck until she replaces that touch with the touch of her lips and tongue, tasting the perfection of Mina's skin.

The scent memory of her body is so powerful in that instant that it brings tears to Vanessa's eyes. The memory of innocence and peace and the life they shared before the darkness fell; the memory of everything Vanessa has spent these years clawing her way back to. And so her tongue traces a featherlight path to Mina's ear and she whispers, "I love you. I've always loved you. Be mine now."

[somuchsuffering]

"Oh," and she lets herself shudder, shift boneless to press herself more closely into Vanessa's arms. Wonders, cold in her nest, precisely how much wide-eyed innocence she'll be able to get away with, and her a married woman. "Oh, yes. Vanessa --"

She can reach out, surely, trail fingertips up to Vanessa's shoulders, trembling-soft and uncertain. Hands slipping into the gorgeous cool tangles of Vanessa's hair, and she will have this for her own, she will.

"Your mouth, my darling," she breathes, lets her head tip back, suffers herself to be kissed. Twists her fingers ever so slightly sharp, strands of hair curling around them. "How shocking you are."