A Place to Belong: Chapter Thirty

Chapter XXX

No Way Forward

Pain met me as I woke. The skin on my face and hands was still pink and raw proving that even my undead fortitude had its limitations. I may have been able to push my body to defy my bane of the sun for a limited time, but it was not without its consequences. I figured as much, but I will need to remain mindful of that in the future. Something cool and refreshing pressed against my forehead, and finally opening my eyes, I saw Isadora pressing a compress to my head. 

“You’re a stupid man,” she said, her tone flat, but her eyes dark and full of worry. “What were you trying to prove?”

“I needed to show Diego that I wasn’t becoming like them,” I said, my voice hoarse and cracking slightly, much like my skin had. The memory made me shudder. Shaking it off, I continued. “Not like Natalia. Not like Marcus… Not like the Camarilla he remembers.”

“And the best way you could do it was to walk into the fucking sun?” she asked, anger bleeding into her voice now. 

“By showing him that I was willing to take the same hurt and shoulder the same weight as everyone else in order to meet the goals I set,” I told her, reaching up and taking the hand she was using to hold the compress to my head, and softened my voice. “I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t going to die. The beast wouldn’t let me kill myself.” 

“The power you used suppresses the beast,” she said, leaning down and gripping my face with her other hand, tightening her hold on mine. “It’s the kind of power that actually lets you overwhelm the beast and kill yourself. It takes the brakes off and if you’re not careful will kill you.” 

I felt her nails dig slightly into my flesh as she spoke, as though she were desperately clinging to me, not wanting to let me go. A wave of cold flooded my stomach as I understood the gravity of what she was describing to me. 

“Oh…” was all I could manage. “Oh fuck.” 

“As I said,” she said, leaning back and sighing. “You are a stupid man.” 

“I very much am,” I said, nodding, then looked up at her and smiled. “Good thing you’re such a smart woman.”

She actually laughed at that, shaking her head. 

“And a good thing that you’re not so arrogant as to think that you’re always right in what you’re doing. That you’re willing to accept the advice and help of others without seeing them as tools… all the time.” She gave me a very pointed look before glancing at the door. “You have some damage control to do. Callie is quite upset with the position you put her in, and Diego is trying to remain neutral, but he’s torn. His loyalty to you and your cause and his feelings for Callie are at war within him.” 

“Feelings for Callie,” I said, musing on the issue. “I never would have guessed that one would actually come to fruition. She was playing him at the beginning, I’m sure you noticed.” 

Isadora nodded, but said nothing. 

“It seems that her role became her reality,” I continued, nodding at my own thoughts. “I’m sure it will take a while before it becomes anything of substance, but honestly… I think it's a good thing.” 

Isadora raised her eyebrow at me. 

“Fraternization in your ranks is a good thing?” she asked, almost prodding me to continue. 

“My ranks,” I scoffed. “I’m not running a military. And I have no intention to run things the way the Camarilla or Anarchs run them. We keep up appearances until such time that the groundwork is laid, then we transition into the proper system.” 

“The proper system?” Isadora asked, and I was beginning to grow suspicious of the way she was interrogating me. 

“Yes… Isadora, what’s going on?” I asked, giving her a curious look. “You’re pushing me to answer something, and you’re not asking.” 

Isadora chewed her lip, as if debating with herself in her own mind. I eased back into the pillow and waited, letting her take as much time as she needed to come to the decision she needed to. Finally, she let out a sign, turned to me, and asked the question that was truly on her mind. 

“Are you planning a coup? Do you plan to have us fight the Anarch, Camarilla, and Sabbat alone?” she asked, fear and worry in her voice. “I managed to isolate myself away from their war, only joining back into this mess because I didn’t have a choice, and because you asked. Now that I’m getting involved again… I don’t want to be marching to my death, as much as I know it is inevitable. You showed me that there’s something worth existing for, and I don’t want to find that only to have it taken immediately after.”

“Coup is a strong word,” I said, shrugging slightly. “I’m planning a revolution, but not the kind you’d expect. And not the kind that can be done overnight. This is the kind that requires us to have allies, to build up our fortifications and marshall our troops. We will not be facing this alone, in fact, that’s the biggest part of this revolution. Loyalty. That is the key.” 

“Our loyalty to you?” she asked, a bitterness entering her voice. “Loyalty to the head of the Queen City?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “That path leads to nothing. And we all know it. We see it every day. What did Callie’s loyalty to Marcus get her? What did showing loyalty to Natalia get me? What did loyalty to your Clan get you? What did loyalty to the Anarch Movement get Diego? All that we served betrayed us. Our loyalties to those things ended with them trying to destroy us. There’s no way forward if we choose to be loyal to something as vapid and shallow as a person or organization.” 

“So what should we be loyal to?” Isadora asked, her bitterness turned to wary interest. 

“To an ideal,” I answered simply. “Or rather, to a collection of ideals. What helped you through those trials of the mask?”

“You?” Isadora asked, her voice sweet but teasing. It made me laugh slightly, and I shook my head.

“Well, I’m glad I could help, but no, it wasn’t me,” I explained. “It was you. Your loyalty to your ideals. To what makes you who you are. Your identity was on trial and you affirmed your sense of self before an ancient arcane artifact whose sole purpose for existing is to judge your identity. And you were not found wanting.”

Isadora looked back at me, her expression unreadable, but there was something in her eyes that told me she was processing something she’d never considered before. Either it was about herself or it was about me, but I could not venture a guess, nor would I be so arrogant to assume to read her mind. Instead, I paused, collected my thoughts, and kept going. 

“Loyalty to the self is just the start, because it is a necessary first step, but if we stay there we remain selfish. I used to tell my students all the time, ‘Any sentence you say that starts with I want or I don’t want is, by its very nature, selfish. But there’s nothing wrong with being selfish, unless it's the only thing you are.’ And I still firmly believe that,” I continued, leaning my head back on the pillow and looking up at the ceiling. “If you want others to be happy, it’s just as selfish as wanting yourself to be happy. The key is wanting something for others as much as you want for you. Be selfish for the right reasons.” 

“And what do you want for others?” Isadora asked, and I could feel the weight in her words. I was being judged. My next statement was going to sway the outcome of everything I wanted to accomplish, everything I wanted to be, every selfish desire I had, and there was no way forward without her support. 

Selfishly, I needed to make sure that she followed me. Say the right word, emphasize the right things, and I could manipulate her into believing me and following me into the depths of hell itself. She loved me enough that I could probably make her do anything. All I would need to sacrifice is her love, her hopes, and her trust. I turned and looked her in the eyes, spilling the full truth from what was left of my soul. 

“I want power, I want control, and I want people to just do things the way I think is best because so fucking often I think I know best. I want to take control of Natalia and wield her like a blade so I can cut through the bullshit everyone is always spewing and make them do what’s right,” I said, feeling the truth of my nature that I’d been trying to deny for so long come pouring out. “So often I speak against tyrants, how anyone who becomes one, or tries to become one, deserves their head on a spike. How the idiots who use their race or their religion or their creed as a means of trying to ‘cleanse the earth’ or ‘purge the country’ of their ilk deserve to be killed on sight, knowing full well that my head would end up on one of those spikes too. My ruthless need for control over others, my feeling like I know what’s best for them, it's no different than anyone else who seeks power and control. I may think that I have the best intentions and the best reasons and the purest of ideals, but in the end I’m just the same as the rest of them. A fucking tyrant.” 

Gritting my teeth, I forced back the tears of frustration that threatened to pour down my cheeks. I’d lost so much blood and strength I couldn’t afford to lose any more precious vitae at this moment. Too much needed to be healed still, and my own recklessness was just making it worse, but being vulnerable with her right now was too much for my heart to take. The facade of intellect and control was slipping as the mask fell away, showing her just how scared and cruel my mind could be. 

“The only thing,” I said, hearing my voice break slightly as I pushed through, screwing my eyes shut to stem the flow. “The only thing that makes me any different from them is that as much as I want to take control, as much as I want to shape the world the way I believe it should be, is that I do not trust myself to do it. I don’t trust myself, and I don’t think anyone else should either. I’ve made so many mistakes, so many errors in judgement, missed so many key aspects that have caused pain to myself and others, that I know with that amount of power I would end up hurting so many others. I don’t deserve that power, and I should never have it. That belief is at war with the idea that someone is going to have it, so it may as well be in the hands of someone with good intentions, and then I fall down the cyclical thought death slide once again, constantly hyping myself up and shooting myself down…” 

There was a long moment where Isadora just watched me. I could feel her gaze even as I tried to keep the tears from flowing. Something warm pressed against my cheek, and I felt her tongue roll up it, lapping the leaking vitae that spilled from my eyes, despite my best efforts. Her voice was soft at first, but there was a sternness to it that I’d never heard from her before. 

“We’re all monsters here,” she said, moving to lick my other cheek. “But we’re all trying to be the best version of that monster that we can be. You seek perfection, as is your clan’s greatest compulsion, but constantly believe that you are too flawed to achieve it, so you either fall short of your goal and blame yourself, or feel you’ll fall short of it so you don’t even try. So I need to ask you one more question: why are you trying, even when you believe that you’re going to fall short of your goal?”

I stared into the darkness behind my eyes and thought. Isadora was patient with me, as I had been with her, and waited as I considered my answer. It took me a long time to figure out how to verbalize it, as it took me a long time to finally come to realize it as well. The reason was always sitting there, staring at me in the darkness, just like the beast that sat in its cage. Unlike the beast, this part of me was not caged, but rather slipped through my mind, influencing everything I did without it ever coming into the light. It scared me too much to ever look at it directly, and so I continued trying to live without it, without allowing the terrible need to affect how I operated. 

“Because you all matter more than I do,” my voice slipped out of me, silent as a prayer. “I don’t matter to me, but others do. My selfishness, my wants, are usually things that I pursue out of fear of letting others down. If I let Marcus’ selfish plan come to fruition, you’d all have suffered. If I let Natalia’s selfish plan come to fruition, you’d all have suffered. If I failed here, you’d suffer, if I fail now, you suffer, so I can’t fail. I need to be perfect, but I know I can’t be… so I need something else now. Something more than I can ever be. Something I have the hardest time doing.” 

I took a deep, shaking breath, the sensation merely a memory of what it once could do for my body, but that memory was real enough that I was able to steady my nerves. I opened my eyes and looked up at her. 

“I need people I can trust, that I can delegate to, and not have to make the decisions myself,” I told her. “That’s the only way my plan can work. And if I don’t have you, I don’t have anything. If I don’t have Diego… If I don’t have Callie… this whole plan is going to go to shit. I need all of you, or there’s no way forward for me.” 

A heavy hand clapped down on my shoulder. Jerking with surprise, I turned and saw Diego stepping from the shadows, smiling at me. His arm was wrapped around Callie’s shoulders, pulling her from the darkness he’d concealed them in. She was clutching the scepter and staring at me, though this time, it wasn’t out of anger or disgust, this time I think I could see a grudging respect in her eyes. 

“That,” Diego said, grin widening. “Was more convincing than stepping into the sun. I’m on board, gringo.” 

I looked up at him in shock, tried to speak, and found that I couldn’t find my voice. 

“Apparently I am too,” Callie said, sighing. “Honestly, I was afraid you were just going to become another Marcus, but you were telling the truth.”

She tapped the side of her head near her eyes. 

“I can tell,” she added, grinning. 

“Of course he was,” Isadora said, and I turned to see her smiling at me too. 

It was eerie in a way, to see pure joy on her face the way I was now. Usually when she smiled at me it was small, soft, and subtle. This smile was wide and joyful, as if she was feeling vindicated in some way. Whatever the reason was, I wasn’t entirely sure, but what I was sure of was that seeing that smile made me want to smile as well. 

“So, fearless leader,” Diego asked, squeezing my shoulder in an unfamiliar brotherly way that made my chest expand. “What do we do now?”

I looked at the three of them, feeling my confidence growing now that I knew that I had them beside me. For a moment, it felt like the four of us could take on the world, but I knew better. Four young kindred probably felt this way before, and ended up meeting the final death brought on by cockiness and hubris. 

We wouldn’t. 

Because I had a plan. 

“First step,” I said, feeling my own grin begin to widen. “We build our network.”