Connor did indeed have a gruesome task that day. Though Eliot had stopped the snakes from eating away at Ravyn’s insides, definitively, they were still there. And they still needed to be removed in order for her body to finally heal and be able to regrow all the internal organs that they had been painfully feasting on for months now.
For all his amazing power, and despite how badly Eliot wanted to see her completely recovered, he still chose to leave the cellar while Connor worked to remove all of those unwanted trespassers from her body. Eliot had no desire to have the vision of her body cut open like a cadaver in some morgue stuck in his head. He much preferred his memories of her body from years back; when that same beautiful body had given him so much pleasure on so many nights. That is, during those nights that they hadn’t been forced to be apart, which were indeed, numerous.
As Connor prepared for what was sure to be hours of surgery, surreal as it even was, in this case, Eliot gently woke Summer and offered to spirit her away to their old home, or anywhere else she may have wanted to spend the day. She smiled softly, the exhaustion still clear in her dark eyes, but nonetheless, followed him from the cellar without protest.
“So, how would you like to spend the day? You’ve more than earned it, I say,” he smiled down at her as they moved up the stairs to leave Connor to his task that day.
“You mean you’re not going to blink yourself back to England to check in with Hollister? She’s saved now, isn’t she?” Summer asked as she took a seat on the sofa in the home that cellar actually belonged to.
Eliot sighed deeply as he also took a seat, “Doesn’t he think I’m gone now?”
“And letting an ancient, powerful, mind reading vampire believe a lie? What could go wrong?” Summer asked, some of her old cynicism still showing through after all these years.
“You already worked for him for all the decades I already had to be away from her. Shouldn’t that be enough?” Eliot stated hopefully.
“Maybe it will be,” she sighed softly. “But you should probably still check with him, just to be sure. I don’t want to see you suffering a whole different kind of backlash now, El,” she stated with concern as she gently touched his arm.
“I’m just worried that letting anyone know we’re both still around after all could turn out badly,” he excused, though she only gave him a knowing look. “And I’ve already been forced to be away from her for so long,” he admitted his even stronger reason for wanting to avoid Hollister.
Summer just chuckled, to which Eliot gave her a slightly hurt look, “Just take her with you, El. Try the simple solution for once,” she told him with another grin as she gave his arm a light squeeze.
Eliot then looked down with an awkward smile of his own, “I guess I’ve grown accustomed to everything being so hard. I kind of expect it now.”
“I noticed,” she smiled.
“Thank you. You are a wise woman, indeed,” he smiled back at her.
“Was that supposed to be a joke about my age? Even though you are technically over thirty years older than me. I mean, you did used to sleep with my dad,” she reminded him wryly.
“OK, OK,” he smiled back at her, “I will see what Ravyn thinks is the best way to approach Hollister, considering the world is still supposed to believe we’re dearly departed, and all.”
“He can learn,” she smiled as she tousled his black curls.
Eliot just shook his head back at her before continuing, “So, like I said, you’ve done so much for us, how would you like to spend the day?”
“You mean you don’t want to watch the... snake-ectomy?”
“No thank you,” he scowled.
After a small chuckle, Summer thought on his question. She then looked up at him as a sudden thought occurred to her. “So this was it, right? The big bad doom that you had always said you needed to save her from?”
“It was,” he confirmed with another shaky breath as he replayed all those events in his head, with a feeling of relief, mixed with all the regret over time lost.
“So, now you actually can give people all the answers you were afraid to ever let out of that head of yours all this time, right?”
“Answers?” he looked back at her questioningly.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“About the future, and all that.”
He took another deep breath, “There’s not much more I know, beyond this. Once I saw it, nothing else I saw really mattered, aside from being able to save her when the time finally came.”
“But you know enough to fill in all the blanks that came before this, don’t you?” she asked pointedly.
“Meaning?” he asked warily.
Summer scoffed, sure he knew exactly what she meant, but she answered nonetheless, “Lucian? Kirielle? All of that?” she asked, her voice breaking slightly.
“Summer...” he began breathlessly.
“El,” she interrupted whatever excuse he may try to give her instead. “I’ve waited long enough for the truth about, well, everything... Haven’t I?”
He took a deep breath as he tried to figure out where to even begin. “The day you brought Kirielle to our house, and that wall inside my head broke?” a pause to gather the courage to continue, knowing there were some parts of this story that Summer definitely would not want to hear. “I knew then that I would need her to help me save Ravyn. And I would need her to be Kindred in order for the siren’s call, Connor, all of it,” he finished in a whisper.
“So you did let it happen,” Summer asked, her own voice dropping as well.
“That’s not completely true. I was telling the truth that I didn’t know exactly when it would happen. But I did know it would. That it had to.”
Summer just let out another shaky breath, “And do you know where she is now?”
“At this very moment? No, not really.”
“But?”
“I know where she will be, when Ravyn sees her again, anyway,” he stated softly. “But it may not make a lot of sense to you, even if I were to tell you.”
“Is the answer at least ‘alive?’” she asked worriedly.
“As alive as any other of their kind, at least,” he offered a smile.
Summer took another breath, “Well if it won’t make sense to me anyway, you may as well tell me, right?
With another sound of resignation, he answered, “An airport in New York... about seventy-five years from now?”
Summer let out a sound of disbelief, “I somehow doubt I’ll be able to make that reunion.”
“I told you it wouldn’t be very valuable information,” he stated sadly.
Summer only smiled though. “But it was. Now we know Ravyn and Kirielle will still be alive in, Christ, the year 2012?”
“Unless just me telling you that does change the future after all,” he stated with an attempt at playfulness.
“Yeah, I sort of doubt that,” she smirked.
He allowed his own small chuckle at that, but when he looked back up at Summer, he could tell she still had another question in her eyes. And he was sure that answering that one would definitely be painful.
And then she asked it.
“So... Lucian?”
----------------------------------------
Hurtful as it was for Summer to find out what role Lucian had truly played in all of this, it would have been just as cruel not to tell her. Despite the questions of what Eliot may or may not have been able to stop or change, or whether he should have tried to change them, he and Summer did still manage to part as friends once again.
Summer had blinked herself back to her London home, and shortly before sunset, Eliot also returned to the cellar where he had spent the last few dark months, literally and figuratively.
“I assume it’s done?” Eliot greeted Connor warily as he reappeared behind him.
Startling only slightly, Connor turned back to him. “You’re the one who saw all kinds of things in the future, right?”
“Well, some things,” Eliot stated hesitantly, wondering what answers he would be asked for from yet another person that day.
“Then please tell me that someone, somewhere, someday, kills whoever the sick bastard was that did that to her,” Connor stated angrily. Now having partaken of Ravyn’s blood a second time to continue to keep himself functional, his attachment to her was growing ever stronger.
“I only hope I’m there when they do,” Eliot sighed as he laid his hand gently upon Connor’s back, letting it linger there a bit longer than necessary. The trauma of their relatively short time spent together aside, it was still hard to ignore how incredibly beautiful this young man was.
Connor took a moment to catch his breath at the slight touch of Eliot’s hand. He did still have all those heightened desires that came with that addiction to their blood, after all.
“Well, I have an eighty pound bucket of dead snakes to somehow dispose of,” he began with a grimaced sigh. “And then I’m going to go take a bath, or four,” he added, as Eliot couldn’t help a slightly interested smirk back in the direction of the young auburn haired beauty. “And then maybe sleep for a few days.”
Eliot chuckled again, “Try to wake up before the 1940s arrive at least. Sleep gets rather boring after the first few years.” Connor only gave the other man a questioning look before shaking his head and moving to pick up that vile bucket and carrying it up the stairs.
Ravyn and Eliot spent most of the night doing their best to just concentrate on being there, together, catching up on all those lost years; and taking in the fact that the prophecy that had been looming over Ravyn since the seventeenth century had now been dealt with. Or at least the part that specifically referred to her possible end. There was the rest of it still, which seemed to refer to the entire world’s possible end, but that was just a little too heavy for either of them to deal with just then.
The hardest hurdle they had to deal with that night was actually the fact of their togetherness finally being attained once more, after so very long. The two of them ached to be with each other in the most passionate way possible. It had been literal years since they had made love after all. But she still had to let her body fully recover, and painful as it was, both of them knew that that kind of togetherness would have to wait at least one more night after all.