Ad Utrumque Paratus

[Dorian M. Black]

"Did it not cross your mind that my gender, wealth and developed skill to reason are nothing to a vexed Elder? I wouldn't be so fast to assume that beyond surface appeal, others do not stare at the same walls you do, with different licks of paint."

Silly girl. "Ghoul a male manager - one with political respect within the industry you deal. What do you think other female kindred do who interact with the human world? Look at the Toreador, or the Ventrue. Audley is a businesswoman; Magwood's free to come and go as she pleases between fiefs; Delaney handles her own affairs for property and theatre; let's not get started on Darrieux... None of them shaft the Masquerade. They choose freedom in the form of humans, who are easier to control than their Elder guardians. They each once too had guardians, ties, obligations, forces that acted against their freedom. Yours is a Nosferatu, you have to go the extra mile. You'll have to believe that I understand that quite intimately."

"For the alleged love Leroux shows you, if she's going to lose it in a jealous rage for your doing just that, then it sounds quite conditional love, does it not?"

"I don't see how your situation is protecting you in the slightest. It's alternately dulling and then asphyxiating you. Good luck with that, miss Daye. If you ever want help just look outside the window in your walls. I'm sure Taylor would be glad you bothered."

Apparently, this has annoyed him more than he'd realised, because Dorian's anger is suddenly available, despite exhaustion.

[Christine Daye]

"Just so, Mr Black, we all have our limitations... or walls, if you prefer."

She turns the page of the score, resting one fingertip to mark her place, so that she can look at him.

"Thank you for your advice though, you have given me a lot to ponder. Maestra has been pulling away from me, ever since we came to Bath..." a spasm of pain crosses her face, quickly smoothed away. "...so perhaps I will soon have no choice... and as for the others you mention... I am in awe of them...and wish I could emulate them..."

She closes her eyes for a moment. Opens them again, letting him see for a moment the true depths of her madness, dark, bloody and full of pain.

"...but I am mad... and will always be so..."

She looks down at the score again, softly humming a phrase, then smiling softly as Taylor's name is mentioned. Then:

"Mr Black... are you quite well? Only... well... why does my situation anger you so? I should be nothing to you... why do you care enough to tell me what I should do?"

[Dorian M. Black]

"Should be nothing to me?"

Dorian stills in his movement, and something complicated happens to the shape of his mouth. Almost aggressively he tosses the subject away, hand waving it aside with a sharp gesture.

"I'm familiar with your clan enough to know that madness doesn't necessitate codependency, nor automatically impairs your ability to deal with one Ghoul - one that you can choose to suit your... temperament. Unless you have a crippling derangement that demands otherwise, you being insane only adds a convenient facet to the justifications you use to barnacle yourself to Leroux."

"I'm not telling you what you should do," Dorian snaps, rising smoothly while discarding the journals on the table. "I'm telling you what you can do."

"I know this dependence on another: the absence of either of you would be an impoverishment to the other, the subtraction of a bitter but compelling magic."

"Why do so many Neonates decide that this is their lot? Sit back and stare at these distant freedoms like stars, in awe, wishing upon such bright novas but never in fact doing anything on their own volition? Every single decision is reactionary. If I have to; if Leroux forces me to; if she leaves me with no other choice by abandoning me."

Christine's gaze doesn't have quite the intended affect on Dorian - although it certainly does something. He's still moving towards her.

"It seems that with only a slight change of expression, with just the lightest adjustment to her mouth or eyes, she would be able to produce a certain smile which would invert all the existing values between you and lift you both into a realm of... a realm of... hope."

"Life with them remains an odyssey of intriguing landscapes and variegated skies. Now without them it's the treading of water without land or boat in sight. Now you wait on a lone, dark rock in the black ocean of that world, your soul sat and singing its song of waiting to the racing fishes and the heartless birds. Selves can survive on their solitary ocean rocks, in their dark towers, in their eyries, in their tombs; they can eat the food of memory, draw sustenance from the rich secrets they keep. Memories and thoughts come like a procession of refugees. There has never, up until now been a sense of hopelessness this intense. It's gone, whatever you were moving towards, you've lost it. The landing stage is broken, collapsed, and now your feet and knees and arms are treading water again; there's no going back without them, no swimming back to the harbour, and no inclination to swim out to sea."

Dorian whispers, each word deliberately separated. "It is a lie. And these are your real walls, Miss Daye."

"If you swim out: you'll see someone swimming towards you. Someone who for whatever reason cares for you, and brings no conditions nor ties to your freedom; perhaps don't waste the opportunity before he drowns. That's all."

[Christine Daye]

Christine listens intently to Dorian's tirade, not flinching as he gets closer and closer. As he finishes, her eyes blink shut for a moment, opening again as a single blood tear rolls, ignored, down her cheek.

Her voice is a whisper.

"I love him, Mr Black. I have never loved anyone like I love him. But I am afraid. I have always been afraid. But for him... I will not be..."

[Dorian M. Black]

Dorian watches Christine for a long moment, his eyes still fierce.

"Fear is an unlovely affair, but a functional one. Use it. It will keep you alive."

He retreats, having realised quite how close he'd gotten. Collects and returns the discarded articles, before heading to the door.

"The library's hired until dawn."

[Christine Daye]

She meets his gaze unblinking.

"Fear may keep me alive, Mr Black. But it is love that I will live for."

As he retreats she turns back to the scores, wiping away the tear on her cheek with the absent-minded lack of artifice of a child.

She turns to face him as he speaks at the door. She is once again the image of the proper Victorian lady.

"Thank you, Mr Black. Good night to you."

[Dorian M. Black]

"... Good night, Miss Daye."

Dorian leaves.

[Christine Daye]

Christine returns her gaze to her music, her face impassive, but hands trembling. Then, bowing to the will of her madness, the dark need to spill emotion into sound, she looks up, once more, to the empty space where Dorian stood, and sings:

"'Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh.

I'll not leave thee, thou lone one!
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter,
Thy leaves o'er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.

So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love's shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie withered,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?"

The last note fades into silence. She gathers her notes, her music, and quietly returns to her studies.