“You’re leaving? Without even saying goodbye? After last night?” Claire added the last question in a near whisper, now having found Lucian at his home, packing away his belongings.
Claire’s emotions were even more brittle now, due to how difficult it was for her to make herself go to that place at all. As soon as the dock near the home came into sight, she was bombarded by memories of the last time she was there. When she had been forced to go, over fifty years earlier, back when it had belonged to another doctor, and another man who she had only ever been with one time.
Lucian let out a heavy sigh at the sound of her voice, forcing himself to stand and face her sad eyes. “Things happened tonight... and...”
“And what? Explain it to me. I’ve been the only one who ever did give you that benefit of the doubt you asked for. Don’t I deserve that much in return?”
“You’re the only thing that makes me want to stay at all, Claire” he attempted.
“But apparently not enough” she bit back, her anger still simmering.
“It’s not like that, Claire.”
“Then tell me what the hell it’s like, Lucian” she ordered.
“Both the men you love will never trust me. Can you imagine how difficult it’s been for me to stay here at all, after Awsha. After Lenore” he whispered, “and to see the way they look at me, especially any time you even offer me one sweet word. How long am I really supposed to just endure that? Especially now that...” he just shook his head and turned away.
“Now that what?”
“Now that I tried to warn Sean, and he wouldn’t even listen. How am I supposed to prove that I’m an ally when I can’t even get the chance? While an actual threat gets a free pass? And all just because I was the one who was unlucky enough to cross paths with that cold-hearted bitch?”
“Wait, what actual threat?”
Lucian just shook his head, “I somehow doubt you’d believe me any more than Sean would” he murmured sadly, turning back to his packing.
“Well, then try actually telling me!” she stated with annoyance.
“I already know you won’t believe me. And I don’t want your distrust and anger to be the way we part. I prefer the more pleasant memory of last night.”
“You don’t want my anger? Then tell me what the hell you mean! What threat, Lucian?”
“So parting badly is how it has to be then?” he stated, more to himself.
“Lucian” she scolded.
He sighed heavily and made himself speak, “it’s Eliot, Claire. He’s not what you think he is. I don’t even know what he is, honestly” he made himself tell her, his voice trailing off.
Claire allowed her own sigh, “you mean a mage?”
That was when Lucian quickly turned back to her, “what?”
“I already know, Lucian” she stated the obvious, “and he’s not a threat, I promise.”
Lucian just scoffed in disbelief, “I’m sorry, Claire. I’m not sure what you think you know about this... mage thing. But I was there tonight. I saw his aura, I tasted his blood. I saw what he did to Emma, and how easily he did it” he told her sadly.
“Emma who attacked him? Emma who was in frenzy?” Claire returned, “what should he have done? Let her kill him? What choice did he even have?”
Lucian shook his head, “he made a piece of wood fly through the air and impale her heart! With one simple hand gesture! How does that not terrify you?”
She swallowed briefly at finally hearing what had actually occurred, but soon spoke up, “again, what should he have done? If that’s the best way he had to defend himself, and he did it, how does that make him a bad guy?”
Lucian just shook his head again, “ok yes, in this instance, it was self-preservation. I’ll admit that much. But the fact that he can do things like that, just like that? How can you say that couldn’t so easily make him into a threat under the right, or rather wrong, circumstances?”
Claire took a long moment before responding, “I guess I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt” she told him pointedly.
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Back at the estate, Sean and Eliot continued to stand awkwardly in the bedroom together after Claire’s rather dramatic exit. Sean let out a sigh as he turned away, casting his eyes to the ceiling and running his hands through those long blonde locks.
Eliot’s eyes couldn’t help moving over Sean’s tall, thin frame and rather perfect behind now that the older man’s eyes were no longer on him. Though he soon forced himself to drag his gaze from Sean and speak once again, “so, is this where you’re going to fuck with my head, or take Claire’s advice, and just fuck with my body instead?” he couldn’t help adding with a wry attempt at humor to hide his own fear that the answer was actually the former.
Still turned away, Sean couldn’t help the slightest smile at the comment, but soon squared his shoulders and turned back to him, “or you could just tell me what the hell Lucian was on about tonight” he stated in an oddly calm tone.
Eliot took a deep breath, knowing that lying was not an option, for a few hundred reasons. He also knew that sooner or later Sean would know all anyway. He somehow doubted that he and Claire had stayed together for three centuries without telling one another every single secret they ever had.
“I can do... things” Eliot admitted with a shaky breath.
“You can do things?” Sean asked skeptically, “are we back to the sex talk? Are you trying to bribe me now?” Sean smirked, allowing a very rare peek at his own humor, however briefly.
Eliot quickly looked down to hide his own smile, “is that actually an option?” he questioned, with the slightest trace of flirtation. Though Sean simply shook his head as he crossed his arms over his chest. Eliot swallowed again as he gathered his courage, “Lucian saw me doing some of those things tonight. It’s how I saved him, us, from Emma.”
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“So you’re like a witch or something?” Sean asked with a crease of his brow.
“Well, I don’t know if that’s the right word, exactly” Eliot returned in thought.
“Well what word would you use?” Sean asked plainly.
“Mage?” he offered the word that Douglas had used, as that was honestly the only one he had to go on.
“Mage?” Sean shook his head, “and that’s why your aura is so... strange?”
“I apparently sparkle” Eliot returned wryly.
“You actually really, really do” Sean informed, causing Eliot to raise a brow slightly. But Sean then turned away again with another heavy sigh, “well, I would consider compelling you to never hurt any of us, but that could lead to problems. Especially with us still apparently being in my little sister’s cross-hairs” he added thoughtfully, more to himself. “This is definitely not a situation I’ve dealt with before” he admitted.
“I saved Lucian tonight” Eliot reminded, causing Sean to look back at him curiously, “and I don’t like him, at all” he admitted, “so imagine what I would do if Claire was ever in danger, what I could do” he told him softly.
Sean looked back at him in thought, “is reading thoughts one of your skills too?”
“I haven’t tried. Why?”
“Because that’s exactly what I was thinking” Sean admitted bluntly, causing a cautious smile to touch Eliot’s lips. Sean then leaned closer, his tone changing, “now don’t ever make me regret trusting you” and with that, he left the room, and Eliot, behind.
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When Claire returned home almost an hour later, she found Eliot still in his bedroom, though Sean had since left the room of course. She stepped through the door cautiously, only to find Eliot lounging across the bed, leafing through the collections of spells and enchantments Douglas had given him.
“You’re here” was her wary greeting as she stepped into the room, slowly closing the door behind her.
“It is still my room, isn’t it?” Eliot greeted her with a smile as he moved to tuck the loosely bound collection of rather well-worn pages into the drawer of the nearby nightstand.
“I was hoping that was still true, considering I left you here alone with Sean. I wasn’t sure what I might come back to” she replied, taking a few steps closer, warily looking around the room, as though trying to determine what had even taken place between the two since she had left to speak with Lucian. “So, what did happen with Sean?” she asked upon realizing that he wasn’t volunteering the information himself.
“Oh we took your advice and spent the last hour making each other come. We’re all good now” he paused with a smirk, “oh wait, that was just in my head.”
“Funny” she scolded, “but really, what happened?”
“I convinced him that my special new skills could be useful. So I’m still allowed to be here, at least for now, at any rate” he told her with a slight shrug.
“Really?”
“I hath my charms” he told her with a feigned defensiveness to his tone. Then he spoke more seriously, “but yes, after I pointed out to him that I saved Lucian from Emma, regardless of how little I even like Lucian” he couldn’t help adding, “I then asked him what he thought I’d do to protect someone I actually do like... love even” he added more quietly.
“So, you used... logic?” Claire asked with a slightly impressed look as she made her way over to the bed.
“I am magical like that” he teased.
Claire just shook her head as she leaned down to give him a little kiss before taking a seat next to him, “I don’t think that same weapon worked with Lucian” she said softly.
Eliot bit back his first response and decided that wit probably wouldn’t be very welcomed there, “so, he is leaving then?”
“I think so” Claire said sadly.
“I guess saving him was the right move” he couldn’t help that one.
“Eliot” she scolded, only to receive a guilty grin from him in return as he pulled her back against him, wrapping her in his arms, as he propped his chin on her head while giving her a little squeeze.
“So what’s this about a prophecy?” he made himself ask a moment later, which merely caused a sad sigh from her.
“You sure you want to hear it? Sean and I haven’t been able to get it out of our heads for nearly two hundred years.”
“Two hundred?”
“Yes, Minna gave Sean the prophecy while we were on the ship that brought us back to America in... gods, 1689?”
“Minna” he breathed the name, seeming more affected by that part of the sentence than by the fact of exactly how long she had been plagued by this looming portent of doom.
“Yes. She’s a seer. And her visions are apparently never wrong” Claire admitted sadly.
“Really?” he stated thoughtfully, thinking back on Minna’s words to him three years earlier. Particularly the part Douglas latched onto, about Eliot somehow being able to change things. Even infallible Malkavian visions, apparently. After another long pause, he continued, “so, tell me already.”
Claire sighed deeply as she tried to recall the exact wording of the entire thing, instead of just the part that had been specifically plaguing her since they discovered whose ghouls it was that had killed Haven. She swallowed slightly as the words came back to her. “After the serpent corrupts the daughter, and the daughter murders the father. Then you will be Prince, and then the snakes will come to devour love, trying to eat it all away. And after the siren calls; the bullets and the blood, and then death comes, and only the dead will live. You must save them, all of them,” Claire finished, the words shaking her even more so now than when she had first heard them.
“All right, that is rather dark” Eliot breathed, trying to buy time to dissect the words in his own brain then.
“And the first three parts have already happened” Claire admitted with a slight sniffle, “which means the next part is coming. And she gave the prophecy to Sean, so we can guess who the ‘love’ is who will be devoured” she whispered.
Eliot blinked back his own fear at her words, but then he had to find out more, “she didn’t say anything about a brother being second or something?” he asked.
Claire immediately turned to face him then, her eyes wide, “no, that was something she said to me, years later. How did you know about that even?”
Eliot sighed warily, “because Minna said something to me too. On the night I found out how to tap into my abilities.”
“Wait, what? What did she say to you?”
“I think it might have a better chance of making sense if you first tell me what she said to you about the second brother or whatever it was” he stated, not able to stop thinking of his own fears about paradox punishing him for helping his own brother, the second son his father had had at that.
Needing to know what was said to Eliot, Claire searched her memory again for that second prophecy of sorts. “She said: The serpent… he’ll take so much. He’ll take your brother’s love, then take his love again, but you will find your second love then” Claire finished, then added, “and I don’t even have a brother, Eliot.”
Eliot swallowed again and replayed his own conversation so he could relay it to Claire, “she told me that I was different and that ‘it’ was wrong. She then said: 'Her brother. He’s not the second. He’s the third. You’re the second now.′ And she said that ‘it’ changed. And then she asked me how it changed. Like she thought I knew. Then...” Eliot’s voice trailed off, suddenly wondering if he should include that next part. The part where Minna had said that he had changed it.
“Then what?” Claire whispered, visibly trying to process the rest of the words.
“That’s pretty much all of it” he stated warily, not yet wanting to get her hopes up with Minna’s theory that he could somehow change anything at all, Because if he couldn’t...
“Wait, wait” Claire interrupted that dark thought of his, “she told me that I would find my second love after my brother lost his loves?” she shook her head, “but then she told you that my brother’s not the second, that he’s the third? What?”
Eliot could only shrug, just as stumped as her right then.
“So a brother I don’t even have is going to be my third love? What the hell?”
“I wish I knew what it meant, Claire, honestly” was all he managed to say right then.
“That makes two of us” she stated sadly.
Claire curled back into his arms once more, trying to find some comfort there with him before it would all come crashing down. Before those snakes came to devour her at last.
But then, after spending several more moments trying to interpret each of Minna’s strange statements, Claire finally turned back to Eliot, “wait. She said that you’re the second now. The second love?” she whispered, “she said it changed. That things are different now, right?” Claire asked, desperately wanting to believe that her interpretation was accurate. Claire then stressed, “she said it changed, Eliot! That means it can change, right?” she asked hopefully, tears welling up, “that means the first prophecy could change too! I might not have to die like that after all... right?”