A Place to Belong: Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter XXII

Was I Ever Innocent?

Pain surged through my body, jarring me awake. I must have been swimming on the edge of torpor, never quite passing the threshold of suspended half-existence into that full blissful release. Instead, I lay there, staring up at the blackness of the tunnels above, the scent of rot lingering in the back of my throat, telling me that Sorrow-of-Ages still lingered close by. I could hear him murmur, mutter, cackle, and growl to himself, or to me, I was never really sure which. Perhaps it didn’t matter to him. Perhaps the simple act of speaking to me helped him deal with his own madness. Perhaps answering him was my way of dealing with mine. 

I couldn’t even move my limbs anymore. Not enough strength remained in my body. Probably not enough vitae either. It had exploded out of me in a burst when I first fell and was impaled, then it petered into a trickle that flowed slowly, painfully, from my body. Now the loss was barely noticeable. Who could tell when the absence of an ocean loses a few more drops?

“Never thought I’d die like this,” I said, my voice hoarse, and I was pretty sure I felt my larynx crack. “Never thought I’d die in a parking lot either, but that happened. Not sure I deserved that one. I wonder if I deserve this one?”

“Deserve?” Sorrow-of-Ages asked, his maggoty grin appearing in the darkness like the cheshire cat. “So often your ilk speaks of what it deserves as if our existences were fair reflections of what we have brought into the world through our lives and deaths.” 

“Many that live deserve death. And some who died deserve life,” I croaked out, grinning. “Can you give it to them?”

Sorrow paused at my words, his greasy body rigid above me spare for the frantic panting of one who’d been knocked off balance when preparing to preach their chosen Gospel only to have it thrown back in their face. 

“Where does a leech find wisdom that rivals The Litany?” he asked, assuming I knew what he was talking about. I wasn’t in a position to hold a poker face with him, nor did I have the strength to emote much anyway. Instead, I fell back into my old habits from my mortal life and allowed my emotional distance to frame my face, giving nothing away. 

“Tolkien,” I answered coolly. “I always valued his words, his messages, though I suppose I never lived them. I couldn’t give life to those who’d lost it when they deserved life, but I cannot count the number of lives I thought I knew deserved to be taken. Tyrants and sycophants, cronies and fools…”

The words were tiring, and I could feel my vitae being drawn out of me again from the exertion. Talking would be the death of me? I nearly laughed. How many of my friends and lovers would not be surprised at all that I died because I couldn’t shut up? Granted, while they’d probably never see the context of that statement coming, the overall sentiment would be expected. 

“How does a leech measure such a thing?” Sorrow asked, pushing me to keep talking. Who was I to deny him that?

“As a leech? I have no idea. My values are retained from my humanity,” I responded, eliciting a scoff of indignation from the Garou. 

“Humanity,” he scoffed again, a guttural choking noise. “You leeches love to think that you still have human blood in your veins instead of your stomachs. But we know the truth: you deny the Weaver just as much as you deny the Wyld and the Wyrm. Pure abominations against the natural order. Things were meant to grow, to die, to rot… You do none of these things.” 

“Whereas humans do all of them?” I asked, causing him to pause again. Sorrow seemed surprised that I was willing to engage in the debate. Perhaps none like me had ever been so talkative while impaled. “I was human once. Not too long ago actually. And do you know the difference between me as a human and me as a Kindred?”

Sorrow narrowed his eyes, suspicious of my intentions, but still slinked forward cautiously, as if afraid I would bite. 

“What makes it different?” he asked, and my earlier quote seemed even more appropriate considering his Golumn-esque behavior. 

“The type of monster I was then and the kind I am now,” I smiled at him, feeling the vitae that had pooled in my mouth beginning to dribble over my lips. Coughing, some of it spattered onto the slick fur of Sorrow-of-Ages, but he didn’t flinch. Instead, he seemed to muse over my words. 

“You are a leech, a monster that survives off the life force of others. Contributing nothing to the world but destruction and pain,” he said, rightly outlying a Kindred’s position in the world. “What made you a monster when you lived?”

“What didn’t?” I asked, coughing up more vitae that Sorrow did retreat from this time. “I survived off of others, never building anything of my own to sustain me. Oh, I blamed every possible misfortune, but that never excused the fact that I was as much a leech in life as I became in death. I just fed off of something other than blood… money, kindness, time, patience… I took and took, telling myself I was giving back as much as I could… but a leech is a leech in the end, are we not?”

He seemed perplexed by my question, keeping back and looking at me, clearly trying to puzzle out some meaning in my words that resonated with him. I could have delved, asked more about him, done the pleasantries of a conversation, but I was dying, and I didn’t care about him. How often did I not care about others? Or cared because I was supposed to care?

“Are you a good person just because you know what a good person is supposed to do and then try to do it?” I asked, not caring about being selfish anymore. “Are you a good person if you help others because that’s what you’re supposed to do? All those times when I was selfish and stupid and dismissive of other people’s feelings, was it really neurodivergency like I claimed later in life? Or was I just a bad person who couldn’t live up to the expectations I had of good people?”

“The lie we tell ourselves,” Sorrow said, his voice seeming distant, as though he wasn’t talking to me. 

“Whatever lie we need to say to protect our egos,” I laughed, coughing up more vitae and feeling the world spin around me as if I was constantly being thrown sideways and never reaching an apex. I closed my eyes for a moment, wondering if darkness was going to overtake me. As my head settled again, I opened my eyes to see Sorrow still sitting where I’d last seen him, tail curled up to his chest, gripped firmly in his claws. 

“How long?” I asked. 

“Quarter of an hour?” Sorrow supplied, then shrugged. “Maybe half?”

“It’s taking longer to come back,” I nodded, slightly, trying not to shake my head. “Won’t be much longer now. Where did I leave off?”

“Protecting our egos,” Sorrow said, simply. 

“Right… our most fragile part. Man, woman, Kindred or Garou, our egos are so easily bruised that we need to protect them at all costs,” I said, laying my head back on the cold stone beneath me. “Explain away reality with twisted logic to assure ourselves that we were right all along. Damn, did I love being right. I bet you I loved being right more than I loved the people I claimed I loved, not even realizing it at the time. I’d correct, I’d argue, and I’d even hurt others just to be right. I wonder how many people I’ve met in my life that I’m a villain in their story now because I just couldn’t accept being wrong, or even to be thought of as wrong.” 

“But the truth must be known,” Sorrow cut in, and for the first time I noticed a note of desperation in his voice, as though I was hearing the lie he told himself. 

“Yes,” I said, closing my eyes. “The truth must be known. No matter the cost, no matter the pain it causes, no matter how badly her eyes plead with yours to just stop and let her see the world through her lens even as I saw the world from mine, and allow them to create a kaleidoscope rather than a perfect window, undistorted by what we consider truth.”

I lifted my head, ignoring the bolts of pain that streaked through my skull like lightning from a thunderhead. 

“And because we refused not to keep our truth silent, to make sure that it was known,” I looked around the collapsed cave Sorrow and I shared and smiled. “We are here. Alone with each other. Slowly dying, content to know that at the very least, we know the truth.” 

Darkness began to overwhelm me again, and I could hear Sorrow crying out, demanding I speak. He even threatened me if I didn’t. It didn’t matter. He could tear my flesh from my bones until he got the answers that satisfied him, but it wouldn’t help. The pain was leaving my body just as my mind was. It wouldn’t be long now. I wondered how long it would be this time before I woke up. I wondered if I would wake up again. And as the cold dark took me, I wondered something else. 

Would the world be a better place if I never woke up again?

Would I have been able to make it a better place if I’d been able to survive this cruel, Kindred world?

Would I have made any difference in it at all had I never died in the first place, never been anything more than a helpless Kine wanting to enact change but never having the capacity to do so?

Or was this always going to be my fate? To die alone in a forsaken place, far from any I’d loved or cared for, buried in a tomb of my own hubris, my only mourner a dark reflection of myself? Isolated in the dark of a pit or the dark of my mind, it didn’t really matter. 

Either way, I would die a monster. 

* * *

A sharp strike echoed through the air, like a hammer striking a nail. The image of a casket being nailed shut entered my dreamstate. Apparently I was still alive, though I wasn’t sure if that was even true. Another strike echoed, another hammerblow, another nail in my coffin. I heard Sorrow growl deeply, the sound of shifting rubble mixed with the sound of shifting limbs. I imagined earth being moved on top of the casket, burying me in a grave of my own making. 

Crack!

Another hammer blow. 

Crack!

But that didn’t make sense…

Crack!

How could they be nailing my casket shut while the dirt piled on top?

Crack!

Then silence. 

The pain began to return, and I groaned, rolling my head, wondering why death couldn’t have just taken me. Death was supposed to be a promise. She’d told me so. She’d told me to promise her that if death came that I would let it claim her. Surely she would let it claim me. Surely it would claim me. Surely she would claim me… 

She?

Where was she? Was she safe? Would I see her again before the final death? Would my spirit wander down here, lost, seeking her forever? Would I be able to find her? Would I ever be able to find…

“Isa… dora?”

I heard my voice ask the emptiness around me. The darkness would never speak her name to me. Death would never speak her name to me. Only I could speak her name. It was the only way I’d hear it again before the end. The only comfort I could find as the last of this farce of a life I had clung to, months beyond what I should have had, was drained from me. The comfort I wanted would not come. I could only give it to myself. My head would not rest in her lap again, her hands would not run through my hair again, and I would never hear her voice again…

“Sorrow-of-Ages,” the smooth, flat tone cut through the silence. My eyes flashed open, blurred from weakness and the dark, but my ears, my blessed ears, they knew what they were hearing. 

My vision cleared enough to see her, framed like a Victorian goddess of death, stood Isadora, standing defiantly, hand in her satchel, and eyes filled with fire. 

“The Warlock belongs to me!” she said, her quiet voice piercing the air with authority and strength. “And I will not be denied!”