It took mere moments for Eliot’s long legs, unused though they had been for most of the last few years, to carry him from the tiny room in the cellar of the estate all the way to the master suite on the second floor. When he pushed open the door that led to she and Sean’s chambers, he was more than a bit taken aback by her appearance.
Claire sat upon the bed, wrapping herself in her arms and looking even tinier than she normally did. But what really shook Eliot to his core was the fact that her alabaster skin had now been nearly all charred black. Even a good portion of her long, beautiful locks had burnt away and turned to ash in the bright sun that her despair had driven her to greet only twelve hours earlier.
When the emerald eyes, which looked even brighter beneath her now charred skin, looked up to meet his, her first reaction was joy to finally be able to lay eyes on him there actually standing before her for the first time in way too long. Then she immediately remembered every other thing about that moment in time, and that’s when she felt her eyes wanting to cry, but not able to find the ability to do so right then.
“Sean found a way to bring you back here...and told you?” she whispered, her voice choked with pain that was equal parts emotional as well as physical.
Eliot’s voice was strangled in his throat then too. Somehow he had hoped, wished even, that the story Sean had told him about that morning’s events, and the reasons behind them, had all been an elaborate lie to make him feel guilty enough to do what Sean wanted. But now that Eliot saw that she had indeed tried to burn away all that beauty, and everything else about her very existence, he felt his heart literally cracking in his chest.
Not able to think of a rational response at all right then, he spoke the first words to come to mind, “I thought you usually healed, in seconds...”
Claire looked down, and even that seemed to cause her pain. “Sunlight is one of the only things that we can’t heal from right away.”
Eliot swallowed again as he made himself take the smallest step toward the bed. “I’m sure Sean will be up here to see you soon too” he attempted that bit of comfort, hopeless as it may have been to try and give her any comfort at all right then.
“No he won’t be,” she spoke, still choking the words out through what he could only imagine was intense pain; something he wasn’t even sure she could feel the physical version of until that very moment.
“Why would you say that?” he whispered, using all of his will to try and force back his own tears at the sight of what she had done to herself, and the knowledge of why she had done it.
“Cause he hates me for what I tried to do. And he hates himself for hating me for it. And he’s scared to death that if I see his anger, then it’ll just make me want to end it all even more. So he can’t face me at all right now.” She stated the facts of how Sean was feeling as though she knew them empirically. And after three hundred years as soulmates, she very likely did.
"Claire... I just...how...” Eliot began as he took another shaky step, but no matter how he tried to end that sentence it came out as more of a recrimination than anything else. He then swallowed, tried to redirect his thoroughly muddled train of thought, and instead tried another sentence, “are you in a lot of pain, or any at all? I mean, physically” he added, despite her strained and choked voice having already supplied him with the probable answer.
Claire tried to shake her head again, but barely managed any movement. “I’m covered in third degree burns. Half my flesh has melted away, I can even see bone in some places. I’d forgotten how much pain it was possible for one person to feel.” She then spoke in an even quieter whisper, “if I even can still be considered a person at all.”
Eliot took another shaky breath, and another slow step toward the bed. “Maybe I can heal you, the way I healed my brother. And the horse,” he added as an afterthought.
That time she did manage to make herself look up with another shake of her head, and a wince of pain to go with it. “I don’t think this is quite the same thing, Eliot. And I don’t want you... trying anything like that right now” she settled on.
That statement pierced his heart again, further proving that the reasons Sean claimed she had had for doing what she had done; they were accurate after all. “I can do much more than you think, Claire. At least let me...”
“No, Eliot, you’ve done enough to try to save me. Just stop, please” she pleaded, the tears obvious in her voice even if her eyes could not produce them right then.
He closed his eyes against her words proving those reasons again. “You didn’t force me to do any of this. I want to save you Claire. It’s my choice. I chose the consequences. Let me take the blame. It is mine after all.”
“You wanted to save me, yes. But you never knew those consequences until they happened. I doubt you ever envisioned a price of not even being able to function in your real life anymore. Not being able to even be with me in the present anymore because you know too much of the future. I really don’t think that was your original plan at all, was it? I mean, you’re trying to save me, and now you can’t even be near me? How would saving me even matter at all, if that’s the price?”
“I’m near you right now Claire. See, I can take it. I was just afraid, but I can do it. I can learn how to function in all these different times if that’s what it takes. It’ll be hard, of course, but I can do it if I need to. You don’t have to try to save me, Claire. I’m the one that’s supposed to save you, remember?”
Then she repeated the words that Sean had said to her so recently, painful as they were, “we don’t know that you were ever the one meant to save me, if anyone was meant to at all. You found a way you thought might give you the ability to do so, but that doesn’t mean it will or it should. Please, Eliot, I can’t watch you lose yourself for the sake of me. I’ve lived long enough. If it’s meant to end then...” she just bowed her head, as though surrendering to her fate once and for all.
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“And I can’t just let you be taken away if I have any chance at all of stopping it” he argued back, though in a whisper. “See, it works both ways, Claire.”
“And this is why I did...this” she held up a blackened arm, accenting the facts that he already was aware of. “I knew you wouldn’t stop trying. This was the only way to make you stop destroying yourself for me, Eliot. I can’t live with that.”
“And I’m supposed to live with that? How is that fair, Claire?” he whispered as he finally took the last step that brought him within reach of the bed.
“It’s not. They all told me not to fall in love with a mortal. And I never listened. I knew the prophecy. I knew what fate had in mind for me, and I still didn’t listen. I just never imagined that a mortal could ever become powerful enough to even try to change fate itself. And now I know the price you have to pay if you keep trying. I never should have ever let myself feel the things that I feel for you. It is my blame to take after all” she finished in a barely audible whisper.
Eliot just shook his head in disbelief as he took a seat at the edge of the bed, trying not to jostle her as he did, difficult as that was, considering his own mood right then. “So that’s what you take away from this? That you never should have loved me at all? That we never should have been lovers for the last two decades? That you never should have helped me to understand what I truly wanted? That you never should have helped me to awaken and find the power I had buried inside me? Is that really your true stance on everything that’s happened between us? That it was all a mistake? Is that what you really, truly believe, deep in your heart Claire?”
She sniffled slightly before finding an answer of any kind. “If it leads to you dying, or going mad, or not ever being able to be happy again, then how can it be worth it at all?”
“Love is always worth it, Claire. It’s the only thing in the world that is,” he told her without pause, he then dared to try and reach for her hand, hoping the mere touch wouldn’t cause her too much undue pain.
However, when their flesh touched, Eliot’s body fell to the mattress as his consciousness was once again whisked away. Though for the second time that evening, he hadn’t intended to send his mind elsewhere at all, but it had now happened once again, through no conscious effort of his own. And once again, he found himself in another time and place altogether.
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A week had passed since Eliot had returned to his travels without warning. Or at least that was the assumption of those left behind to try and determine what had actually happened. Though none of them were anything resembling experts on his ability, not even Douglas. Not that Claire dared to try and contact Douglas again after the last words he spoke to her during their one conversation were nearly immediately followed by her downward spiral and attempted suicide.
But she had pleaded with Eliot to stop doing this to himself in some vain attempt to try and save her; and then he did just that moments later, without any indication that that had even been his plan. And because of that fact, she was vacillating between anger and worry on a nearly minute by minute basis for that entire week.
She and Sean had even both tried to compel him back to his own body more than once that week, but it seemed that trick was no longer working. And that just worried, and irked, them both even more.
On this particular night in 1886, the sound of the large brass knocker at the front door of the estate echoed loudly through the marble entrance hall. Claire immediately got to her feet and went to open the door herself, rather than allowing a servant to do so as was usual on most other nights.
When she opened the heavy door to their guest, he looked around with a bit of confusion, but it still didn’t stop him from moving his eyes over Claire appreciatively upon seeing her again for the first time in years.
“Did you change your hair?” Lucian asked in that same British accent that still dripped with charm.
She self consciously moved her hand to the hair that now only came to a length below her shoulders, rather than the waist length locks she had worn it in since her mortal days. That was as far as it had grown back in the week since her close encounter with the sun. Though the rest of her was mostly healed, aside from a bit of lingering pain and redness tinting her pale white skin still.
Lucian just shook his head and continued, “and why exactly am I here?”
“I summoned you.” she managed.
“OK that answers how, but not why” he returned as his eyes moved over her once more before he stepped inside.
“We might need a doctor” she added as she awkwardly followed him inside, considering this was honestly the first time they had spoken since their night of lovemaking and his hurried departure from their territory back in what now seemed like another lifetime.
“We?” he raised a brow as he looked back at her. “And might?”
“There might not be anything actually medically wrong with him. But if there is, we need to know” she added with the same nervousness, not just because of how things were left between them, but also because she knew full well that the patient she would be asking him to see was hardly one of his favorite people back in that other lifetime.
“And you couldn’t find any other doctors in all of Los Angeles?” he inquired wryly.
Claire sighed at his stubbornness that she couldn’t help feeling was feigned just to make her squirm after their strange parting of ways. “But you’re family” she decided on; to which Lucian only scoffed.
“So where is our lovely patient? And what species are they? I mean, I doubt many of our particular set of peers would have need for a medical doctor.”
“In the cellar, and it’s Eliot.” she made herself admit as she saw the tension immediately flare up behind all that charm he never seemed to lose otherwise.
“So, no real idea what species then?” he stated in an only slightly quieter tone.
“Lucian” she scolded.
“What could possibly be wrong with the magical bastard of the Bonapartes anyway?” he made himself continue as she led him toward the stairs that led downwards from the main hall.
“I don’t even know if there is anything wrong with him, not really” Claire sighed as they approached the room he had since been returned to.
“So a real emergency house call then? Requiring a summoning even?” he stated sarcastically as they moved through the doorway.
Pushing away his continued sarcasm, Claire spoke again. “He does this thing now. And it leaves him in this sort of state. It’s not so much like a coma as it is like torpor, even though he’s not Kindred. But the problem is, any time he ever entered this state, it was his choice to do so. He can astral project. And that’s what he’s doing now, we think” she made herself try to explain. “Only, any other time he’s ever done it, it’s always been his choice to go. This time, it wasn’t. He just passed out. So we don’t know if he is still just astral projecting or if it’s something else. After all, this was the first time it seemed to happen without him planning on it.”
“Claire, my darling” he began with what was either condescension or just his inherent Britishness, “In university, they never really gave us a course on magical dream-walking mortal mage things. Not sure I’m the man to help you with this one.”
Claire huffed in frustration “I just need to know if he’s all right, physically. Like I said, he’s never done this before without planning to. It could be something wrong with him physically that made him just pass out, couldn’t it?”
Lucian sighed, but somehow still easily gave in to her desires, just as he had been known to do more than once in the past.