As much as Claire enjoyed Eliot’s kisses, she still couldn’t help giving him a cautious look once he released her from his embrace. “This sounds like a whole lot of guesswork, Eliot” she stated softly.
Eliot let out a slight sigh as he moved to take a seat at the edge of the bed, wincing slightly as his shirt brushed against the symbol still carved into his chest. “Unfortunately I didn’t have the chance to test any of this time magic when it comes to seeing the future. Let alone, someone else’s future. But it’s the best chance we have to change yours. To save you from whatever horrible thing may be coming.”
Claire just shook her head, her worried look not abating that easily. She took a seat next to him at the edge of the bed and covered his hand in hers. “I love that you want to try. But if it’s this important, then can I ask why you haven’t tested it in... whatever way it is that you’ve tested out all these other amazing things you can apparently now do?”
Eliot let out another sigh. “My tutor and mentor, he’s the one I usually try anything untested with. He’s been doing this much longer than me, after all” he admitted.
“Then, again, why haven’t you done that this time? I mean, I know about little spells Sean’s sister and her mother did in the woods, asking for favor from their gods and such. But that was three hundred years ago. And I know about the strange powers our blood gives us, since that’s literally a part of me now. But the things you can do, Eliot: They amaze even me.” She paused a moment. “Which likely means that I’m not the person that should be helping you try them for the first time ever” she stated sadly, squeezing his hand slightly.
“Douglas doesn’t even think it’ll work. And doubt can ruin any spell. In a possibly deadly way” he added more quietly, looking away for fear of seeing the disappointment on her face at that confession.
“So Douglas, your tutor, mentor, and lover” she couldn’t help adding, “he doesn’t think it’ll work?” she asked, her voice breaking slightly as she did, that hope starting to slip away just as Eliot feared it would once he let her know that Douglas had misgivings about the one thing he had found in all his studies that might actually be able to save Claire after all.
Then Eliot spoke a bit defensively, “the reasons for his misgivings are completely unfounded. And I don’t need to deal with that kind of... opinion,” he settled on, “when I’m going to need every bit of faith in this working to give it any chance at all to work.”
Claire took another momentary pause as she saw the anger flash in his eyes at the mention of his tutor’s apparent opinions. “But how do you know his opinions on it not working are unfounded? Like you said, he’s been doing---”
“They are” Eliot answered sharply as he stood again, taking a long breath to tamp down his still simmering anger over the insinuations Douglas had made.
“Again, I don’t know anything about the kind of magic you can make happen, but what reason did he have for thinking it wouldn’t work? I mean, if I’m going to be helping you with this, I should probably know about anything that could cause it to go wrong, shouldn’t I?” she asked, though gently.
Eliot let out another sound of frustration before offering her any response. “As much as his so-called worries angered me, I sincerely doubt you would enjoy hearing them either.”
Claire narrowed her eyes at that before speaking again. “So, it’s me? I’m the problem?” she deduced, posing the question in a small voice as her emerald eyes moved to the floor.
Eliot looked back at her once more, “I thought it was only your husband who read thoughts.”
In a mumble, Claire spoke, “I’m beginning to wonder if I’m developing that skill anyway, without even wanting it.” She then looked back up, “if me being what I am might mess up your powers or something like that, then maybe we should just....”
“He was wrong Claire. Wrong about you. His whole reason for thinking it wouldn’t work with you is just... wrong. So don’t you start giving into those doubts too. He has no idea what he’s even talking about when it comes to you. His only experience with your kind was as a slave. I’d say his opinion is just a bit biased” he told her firmly.
“Wow, you’ve spent years as the lover of someone who hates your other lover. That must have been a joyful experience” she shook her head sadly as she looked away again.
“He doesn’t hate your kind. He just doesn’t know you like I do. That wasn’t the sort of relationship he had with his... master” he assured her.
“Well maybe your opinion of me is biased too, Eliot. You’ve definitely had a different experience with us, me, than he did” she just shook her head again.
“I know for a fact that what he said was wrong. Trust me on that one” he stated, but more gently as he moved to sit next to her once more.
After a long moment of sitting close, her head on his shoulder, Claire finally made herself ask, “so why exactly does he think the.. the thing... wouldn’t work with me?”
“Soul connection” Eliot supplied, though quietly. Though when she looked up at him, he saw in her sad eyes that he had somehow already answered her question.
“So that’s why?” she looked away again to hide the hurt in her eyes at the widely believed assumption about her kind, at least among those who even believed in their existence at all.
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“Like I said, Douglas is wrong. You and I both know that for a fact” Eliot insisted as he squeezed her tightly against him with the arm he still had wrapped around her pale shoulders.
“I mean, do I have one? It’s not like there’s been studies done” she mumbled with sarcasm to hide the hurt.
“Soulless creatures don’t feel” Eliot stated simply. “And we both know you feel even more deeply than all those humans who make that idiotic assumption. Tell me I’m wrong” he told her plainly, offering her another gentle squeeze.
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As it turned out, Claire being ‘what she was’ wasn’t a hindrance to their passionate and sensual soul connection ritual after all. It actually turned out to strengthen the power of the ritual even more than what Eliot likely could have achieved if he had tried it with his other lover after all.
Despite her claims of being amazed by the power Eliot had, Claire herself was power. She was three hundred years of power and immortality embodied in one beautiful, eternal creature. And once the ritual began and their bodies joined, so too did that power of his with the amazing power that she was the very personification of. No matter how much she balked at her own abilities, they were there inside her, making up every molecule of what she was. And Eliot had found a way to, very literally, tap into that when they became one that night.
He found that with her power and their souls connected, he could literally project himself into any point at all in Claire’s extremely long life. And because of the blood and now the soul that they did indeed at least partially share, it gave him a sort of control that he had never known in all the years since his awakening. And he now knew why he had to go back to tell his own past self that Claire was the key to everything Eliot would become one day. And luckily, he listened.
Eliot could astral project into any time in her life, or unlife, and stay there for as long as he wanted or needed to. And because of their connection, he could even allow Claire to see or hear him. And he did want to, but he knew better than to change any piece of the past at all. That would be a very dangerous game and potentially catastrophic. After all, when he changed his own past, he honestly did change everything he ever was or was ever meant to become. But in his mind, it had been the right choice.
Changing the future would likely be a lot less detrimental to their current existence, but he was still working up the courage to look into that dark future that was coming for her. Even if he had had any inkling of where in her future he would need to go. It would have to be all trial and error, he supposed. But it would be worth it if he could actually save her. Though, now that he had the power to see any part of her life he wanted to, the thought of watching a past that she had already lived through; that was much less terrifying than blindly looking into a future that seemed wanted her gone from it.
At first he would only tiptoe into bits and pieces of her past and silently watch her from afar as she became the woman he would grow to love. In some ways, he fell in love with Claire before he was even born, in a manner of speaking. But it was all pretty difficult to even put into words the feeling of traveling through time, even if it was only in astral form. But every piece of her past just made him grow to care about her even more strongly, if that were even possible. And in that way it made him even more determined to save her. He could not let her be taken from him, or the rest of the world. That he would not allow.
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It was true that Eliot could return to his own body and their actual timeline, there in 1879, whenever he wished to, but deciding to walk away from all those beautiful things he could now witness firsthand; that wasn’t always easy to do. After all, time would still pass for Claire and Sean and the rest of them while Eliot was in another time altogether. If he wanted to spend a week in 1584 watching a beautiful sixteen year old, and very human Claire casting spells in the woods with Sean’s apparently mortal sister, he never knew what may have happened during that week of 1879 that he had missed, and what he would come back to.
It was a difficult, and stressful balancing act, this time travel thing. And it kept him in a state of urgency hoping that he would not somehow miss the one moment that he needed to be there to save Claire from her dark fate. If only he knew when that moment would be. And that was something he would have to get to figuring out, and soon. He just wanted to make sure he had a complete handle on all of his new power and never missed any clue that might have happened in the past that could help him change the future. A stressful balancing act indeed.
There back on that warm evening in 1879, it had now been a full two days since their ritual allowed Eliot to make his first foray into another time. Claire and Sean were standing in the doorway of Eliot’s room as he lay there on the bed, perfectly still, his mind now apparently traveling through some landscape in some other place, or rather, some other time.
“It’s so eerie. Like torpor, but... well, not” Sean told her furtively, as though Eliot could still hear them speaking a few feet from his motionless body.
“Humans don’t go into torpor” Claire responded, also watching Eliot worriedly.
“I know that, but it’s still like that. It’s not like a coma. We’d have to find some way to feed him and other... less pleasant things, if he were in a coma, but he’s not. Not really. So therefore, it’s like torpor” Sean repeated in the same hushed tone. “He seems fine, just.... not here.”
“Well we hope he’s fine” Claire returned, biting her lip. “I mean, he could be anywhere at any time. Who knows what he’s going through right now” she continued, her worry growing with each hour that his strange slumber continued. Though now she was beginning to get some idea of what Eliot himself had gone through that first time he had witnessed her own bizarre state of unconsciousness and not really ‘being there’ that occurred with each sunrise.
“What he’s going through?” Sean gave Claire a look that seemed much less concerned than her own. “He’s astral projecting. He’s not going through anything. He’s not there, not really. He’s here, at least physically.”
Claire huffed as she looked up at him, “and you’re not worried that he could see something that could make him so upset that he can’t get back to his body? I mean, that kind of thing could happen, right? His mind could get trapped in some waking nightmare or something, and he might not ever be able to come back! You’re not even a little worried about that?” she asked Sean with disbelief.
Sean tried to keep his expression blank as he found a response, “I think you’re worried enough for all of us.”
She shook her head up at him again, “how can you be so nonchalant about something horrible like that happening to him? Are you forgetting that he’s our only hope of saving me from those fucking snakes?” she sniffled.
Sean sighed sadly as he wrapped her in his arms, “we don’t honestly know that he’s our only hope of changing the future, Claire. I just don’t want you to...” he just shook his head, not sure how he intended to finish that sentence after all.
“He is Sean. He really is the only hope I might still have. I just know it.” She sniffled again as she turned out of his arms and moved to a seat on the bed next to where Eliot still did not move a muscle as his mind was who knows where doing who knows what, all just to try and save her.