Redux: Lineage

I had to admit: the sheer amount of teleporting I'd done in the past few hours was making me queasy. I'd gone from Canterlot, to the Empress' palace, to some underground base, back to the palace, and then back to Canterlot, only to teleport right back here. I had never been a fan of a horse, a saddle, and an open trail beforehand, but at this point I'd rather have a slow ride and some good scenery than have my teeth itch, my skin crawl, and my brain tearing itself in half to try and remember what time of day it was.

"You doing alright?" Twilight asked me, crossing a leg over and leaning back on the large, wooden crate she'd taken a seat on.

I looked over at my aunt, the two of us having taken to waiting alone inside a library that seemed to be in the midst of a renovation while the others went to attend to different duties. Shining had gone to fill the Empress in on what had transpired, the three of my group had all gone to eat while I stayed behind due to not being hungry. That left Twilight and I to entertain ourselves, and with Twilight being Twilight, that meant a trip to the library.

It could have been worse. At least she didn't take us to the plague lab to take samples of pus from sores on a victim's body.

"Not really," I sighed, rubbing my eyes and trying to quell the sick feeling in my stomach. "Teleporting kind of sucks."

"Hmm. I must be reassembling you wrong," she said, looking at her painted purple nails with a way-too-aloof manner for the sentence she just said.

"Excuse me?" I asked in a worried tone.

"Well, there are two types of teleportation that we've mastered," she began. "The first is cutting a hole in the fabric of existence and forcing it to lead to wherever you want, this being a much more difficult and power-draining version, and the second is to break down the very essence of a person or object and rapidly reassemble it somewhere else. I did the second version on the way back to avoid wasting any more power than I need to, and may have left a few atoms slightly to the left of where they should be."

"So I could have a weakened sword arm because you put the bone back in the wrong place?" I asked in a bitter manner.

"I'd be more worried about having reassembled you with the lining of your organs misaligned and making them more likely to rupture under pressure," she shrugged. "Hell, you could be feeling sick because you're slowly bleeding out from a two centimetre hole in your stomach that you're unaware of."

"That's comforting," I said, blinking quietly. "Can you make sure it isn't?"

"You're probably fine," she said, waving the concern away.

"Can you please make sure it isn't?" I repeated in a louder fashion.

"Oh, alright, fine," she said in an annoyed tone, rolling her bright eyes as she moved over to me.

Without any real instruction as to what she wanted me to do, she lifted my shirt up and began poking and prodding at my abdomen, pectoral area, and just above my groin with warm, glowing fingertips. Her eyes danced about for a long moment, glowing just as brightly as her fingers as she channelled her magic, only to pull my shirt down soon after and kill off her magical power.

"There, all better," she said, sitting back down on the box.

"'All better' and 'there was nothing wrong' are not the same thing, Twilight," I said. "What was wrong?"

"Just a little bit of out of place tissue in the lining of your stomach which was causing a teensy bit of haemorrhaging and internal bleeding that mayhaps have been fatal," she said, crossing her legs again and looking at the enormous selection of books all around us. "I realigned the tissue, removed the blood from your stomach, and gave you a nice rush of endorphins to make the happy juice start flowing. Is that okay?"

"I was bleeding internally?" I asked in horror.

"Just a smidgen," she said, gesturing and narrowing her eyes slightly.

"I was bleeding internally?!" I demanded.

"Oh, hush, you bloody drama queen," Twilight scoffed. "Honestly, if you're going to complain about the smallest inconveniences, then you'll never have any fun in life."

"I could have died!" I barked.

"Yeah, but did you though?" she asked, cocking an eyebrow in a inquiring manner.

I recognised the smug tone she was going for and prayed to the heavens she wasn't about to make that same stupid pose she always did when she was-

"And I'll have you know that a mage of my calibre," she said in a haughty tone, leaning forwards slightly, narrowing her eyes and pouting in the most smug manner one could as she pressed her fingers against her chest in that stupid fucking gesture she always did. "Would never allow something as trivial as the matters of life and death impact my perfect spell casting."

"Didn't you just say you fucked up the teleportation spell and nearly killed me?" I asked in a bemused tone.

"I have no recollection of this," she sniffed. "This account is clearly false and we shall speak nothing of it from hence forth. Good day, sir."

"But-"

"I said good day!" she snapped, standing up from the box and storming off deeper into the library, leaving me alone with my pile of irritation and confusion...

And a good look at that thick ass as she left but shhhh...

With my annoyance and perversion to keep my company, I sat in silence for a long moment, hearing the sound of Twilight sorting through the shelves for a tome that interested her, a panicked squeak, and finished off by a loud sound of many, many thick books tumbling everywhere.

I turned to try and look at where Twilight had gone off to, only hearing a faint groan of pain after the poor woman had been bombarded by the stack. I couldn't get a good viewpoint on the disaster, so I leaned further over, caring enough to see what had happened but not caring enough to actually get up and check, only to nearly have a heart attack as someone pretty much spoke into my fucking soul due to how close their mouth was to my ear.

"Richter?" they asked in a more polite term than I'd heard them use before.

Keeping the womanly scream that was growing in my lungs clamped down with manly iron thoughts of beer, boobs, and... something else manly that starts with the letter 'B', I turned to my right and met the guilt-ridden green stare of the emerald-eyed Vampiress herself.

"Verella," I said in a tone I put on to try and hide the fact she nearly just made me hit a falsetto note high enough to shatter windows. "What's wrong?"

"I..." she said in a quiet tone, her eyes falling from mine for a brief moment. "I wanted... I wanted to apologise. Do you mind if I sit down?"

"No, not at all," I said, scooting over on the box I was sat atop and making room for Verella.

She sat down on the box with a sigh, her eyes locked onto her knees and her fingers tightly gripping her pants. It seemed she was having a hard time getting going with her apology, her eyes darting slightly and her mouth opening several times, only to close soon after and her expression hardening.

"I'm sorry for..." she managed to choke out, either emotion or pride making it insanely difficult for her to speak clearly. "For the way I've been acting towards you. It's just... I... I've been..."

She fell silent again, turning away from me and hiding her face under her fringe, lip trembling once more as if she were about to cry. I figured that this was a difficult thing for her to do, possibly because she wasn't the apologising type, and having to admit her wrongs brought on an emotional weight that stacked on top of her already fragile emotional state with what had happened already, or that apologising made her think about why she'd been acting like this, and it brought back all the pain she was trying to suppress.

"I just don't want you to think..." she choked, tears streaming down her face. "That I'm some kind of... I..."

The awkward feeling of being unable to comfort a grieving person came rushing back to me, as it had done with Verella's aunt, but I knew this time that I couldn't just sit here and let the poor girl sob her heart out to someone as cold and unmoving as a statue. I shook my head, getting off the box and standing in front of her, ducking down so that I could lock eyes with her.

"Hey, don't worry about it," I said, mentally kicking myself for starting off with one of the most cliche 'there there, sweetie' lines I could've used, knowing that I needed to reach deeper for a genuine response to make her stop crying.

I thought back to why she was like this. She was angry with herself for starting the war, as she'd said, blaming herself for the death of her cousin, the deaths of all the other Vampires, and the belief that she was entirely responsible for so much bloodshed due to her being the first one to raise her hands against her own mother.

Self-hatred and a belief that everything was your own fault.

That was a woman I could relate to."

"Look, Verella, it may not seem like it, but I know exactly where you're coming from," I said, thinking back to my own experiences with being the reason everything went wrong, or so I always felt I was. "The belief that everyone in the room is looking at you like you're at fault, feeling like every single defeat, loss, and death is stacking on your shoulders and that everyone else around you would be better off if you never existed. I understand that probably more than any other person in this castle right now... I've been there more than a few times in my life and might still be there, for all I know."

She looked up at me now, still hiding behind her fringe but clearly looking right into my eyes, staring deep into my soul with her tear-slicked, emerald gaze.

"And it may seem like I'm the biggest cunt on the planet right now for only having learned of this answer to the problem today, but the only thing you can do to stop it all from killing you is to get better," I said. "Not 'promise to become better', not say 'today's the day I start making a difference'. But to get back on your feet and carry that weight to victory. You've got to try and dig yourself out of that pit, use the burning fire of anger and hatred to fuel yourself to fight harder and stronger than ever before. I can't promise you that it'll be easy, and I can't promise you that it'll make you feel completely guilt free from the second you decide to do it, but I can promise you that, if nothing else, it'll at least give you the piece of mind that you're doing more than just sitting around and crying about it. You're trying to do better than before, and that's the place you start. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

She didn't answer me, the poor girl looked like opening her mouth to speak would cause her to cry even more, but there seemed to be a sparkle of understanding in her eyes, something in her expression that told me she was processing and thinking over what I'd told her. I knew it wasn't a great speech, and I knew it wasn't a rallying delivery that would get an army of men to laugh at death and charge into the swirling abyss with a song in their hearts and a smile on their faces... but I hoped it would be enough to get a young girl, barely older than I was, to stop hating herself for the choices she'd made.

"If... if I'm not overstepping my bounds..." I said after a moment of quiet, Verella's eyes locking onto me once more. "I'd like to be there to help in any way I can. Whether it's helping you train or practice... or even if its just as someone to talk to. I figure someone who thinks they're useless can always be given an ego boost by someone who is worthless, you know? I am what you think you are, so I can tell you that you're not? Because you're not me?"

I scratched the back of my head, feeling that I'd kind of ruined the sentiment I'd built up moments ago with useless ramblings to try and sound even more like a cheesy adventure novel... speeches were hard. I wasn't very good at them, and it was never more obvious than it was now.

I began to feel my ears burn with embarrassment as Verella didn't say anything, wondering if I'd pushed past a boundary of hers and given her a reason to dislike me, especially after she'd come to apologise.

"Grael, what's the quickest and most painless way to kill yourself?" I asked the Direwolf over out connection.

"A blindfold and a leap off a high tower," he answered after a brief moment. "Why do you ask?"

"Just for future reference," I added, glancing back up at Verella's face and wholly expecting her to be giving me a blazing look of disgust.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the tears stemming and a small smile touching her beautiful lips.

Yay! She didn't hate me!

"I'd be very grateful for that..." she said, nodding slowly as she wiped the tears from her porcelain cheeks. "Thank you..."