Ad Utrumque Paratus

[Dorian M. Black]

((This is for anyone.))

The Mysteries of Opium Reveal'd: By Dr. John Jones... Confessions of an English Opium-eater.... The Opium Habit: With Suggestions as to the Remedy... More colourfully, China and the Chinese: their religion, character, customs, and manufacturers: the evils arising from the opium trade...

Dorian sighed, and slipped the last offending article back between the others. The shelf yawned tiredly. With only a measly selection of papers he retired to the wingback chair, descending with an odd feeling of fracture.

Researches into the Chemical Constitution of the Opium Bases. Part I.--On the Action of Hydrochloric Acid on Morphia.

Eventually his mind wandered, eclipsed by burnout. Weeks had passed without pause. He'd pulled strings to hire the library after close and was now feeling the futility of the endeavour.

Tonight Dorian felt stretched, as if his consciousness was a length of elastic, one end fixed to the here and now, the other pulling into the space where the afterlife should be, straining for the faintest sign of Anton, hell, even George's family or that poor bartender who died, painfully, of a lung puncture back in seventies, anyone from history's billions of dead who can say yes, there's something, don't panic, this isn't it.

He hoped morality, like the planet, was round. He'd travelled so far from virtue he must be very close to reaching it again, but from the other side his time, the inside he'd like to think.

[Christine Daye]

Her voice, singing softly to herself, announced her presence before she came into view.

".... and he laid his hands on me, and this he did say:
'it will not be long love, 'til our wedding day'..."

Christine rounded the corner, arms full of sheet music and scores, fighting a losing battle to keep them all in her arms. Thus preoccupied, she failed to notice Dorian before she was well into his sight. And when she did notice him, she started, dropping a score with a heavy thud on the floor.

"...oh... oh! Botheration!" she exclaimed, bending to pick up the score, hampered by her heavy skirts and her corseted frame.

She straightened, then bobbed a quick curtsey.

"...oh.... my apologies, Mr Black... I did not know you were here... my apologies for disturbing you... I shall leave you in peace..."

She started to back out of the room, still struggling with the sheet music, the books and papers seemingly determined to throw themselves out of her satin-gloved grasp.

[Dorian M. Black]

Dorian's muscles bunched up at the first herald of song.

How did she know?

Unfortunately, he was too well-bred not to rise as a score dropped, automatically, and without thought reaching for the offending material before handing it to the songstress.

"You were not... interrupting," he said grudgingly, feeling poor as she struggled. "I was getting no where."

For a moment longer he watched as the fountain of fabric warped at the door.

"Miss Daye-" he said, then halted himself. A quiet exhale later, and he conceded to the rawness of the night. "I shan't be long."

This was the issue with Neonates: too close to the times. Though Dorian reasoned she was a vampire, and therefore not a woman to be worrying over for response at all, he too was vampire - ironically, this was the sticking point, because he loathed the reminders of his sudden station - and Dorian was feeling uncharitable to certain Elders that month.

"There is a table by the bay, and score sheets to your left."

[Christine Daye]

She stopped, a look of surprise evident on her face, which she then attempted to cover by looking down at her escaping sheet music. Then, when she had schooled her expression back into one appropriate for a well-mannered Victorian lady, she looked up again.

"...oh... thank you Mr Black..."

She walked over to the indicated table, and carefully put the pile of music down, alongside her usual red music case. She fussed with the pile for a moment, arranging it so that it would not all slide off the table in an avalanche of the great composers as soon as she let it go. Matters arranged to stability, if not her satisfaction, she turned to Dorian again, preparing to engage in the social niceties.

"Are you well, Mr Black? And... oh... forgive me... I shall return to my studies very shortly and not pester you... I promise... but I simply have to ask... Have you seen aught of Maestra... Lady Erika Leroux...? I think she is visiting with her family.... but I have not had the slightest breath of a word from her in weeks and weeks and weeks! I am so very worried!!"

She managed to keep her voice mostly calm and polite, but her twisting fingers betray the agitation she is feeling.

[Dorian M. Black]

"I have seen naught of Elder Leroux, but then, I am due no visit to the bountiful below. I find myself generally excluded from clan meetings, one way or the other."

"She could be anywhere for all I know. Our sharing blood does not dictate we dine as one nor jolly together on evening promenade. Perhaps it better that you ask Williamson - or Elder Viktor?" Now that's a thought.

"And yourself, Miss Daye? Surely you cannot exist in melodramatic worry, purely consumed by the depths of her absence." A deliberate, slow glance to the score sheets. "It seems you have hobbies."

[Christine Daye]

"Oh..."

A simple sigh, a look of disappointment.

"Well, thank you for your honesty, Mr Black. I would ask Mr Williamson, or Lord Viktor, if I had any chance of finding them.... but well and so... patience... patience..."

Her eyes flick down to the score, lying open on the table. Almost absently, she continues, one gloved finger tracing along the stave:

"I am worried... very much so... But I find myself in a situation where I am helpless. Either Maestra will return, or she will not. In the meantime, denied the opportunity to perform, I seek new music. I practice. And I pray."

Her grey eyes flick to his for a moment.

"Work can be such a comfort in times of distress, do you not agree?"

[Dorian M. Black]

"He is no Lord," Dorian corrects, almost knee-jerk. "Viktor holds no peerage in the British Isles, courtesy title or otherwise. Whence has this custom of falsely flaunting nobility sprung up?"

He seems to be asking himself, the irked question directed at nothing in particular. Muttered immediately: "He doesn't even come from England... Nobility, psh."

His eyes refocus on Christine. "Elder Viktor. Or Master Harpy. I doubt he'll mind either of the two."

Dorian's gaze follows hers as it dips. Christine's questions floats over him uncomfortably, and so he ignores it.

"Do something for your situation, then. Why do you feel that helplessness is anything but a choice? This illusion of walls you've kept is your own. I would pity you, but you seem to want them so dearly that you haven't even attempted to bypass them."

[Christine Daye]

"Oh, thank you for enlightening me, Mr Black. Elder Viktor, or Master Harpy. I shall remember."

Her eyes go back to the score, one fingertip tracing the stave, humming the melody as she sight-reads it.

"No," she says to herself, frowning slightly. "Though I could sing it as a tenor... no..."

She shuffles the papers, absently responding to Dorian's question.

"Mr Black... I fear that you have made some assumptions about me that are incorrect..."

She gets distracted by the next piece of music that she turns over.

"Oh! Rigoletto! How marvellous!"

Her eyes light up in happiness as she lifts the pages. Softly, but impeccably, she sings:

"Caro nome che il mio cor
festi primo palpitar,
le delizie dell'amor
mi dêi sempre rammentar!
Col pensiero il mio desir
a te ognora volerà,
e pur l' ultimo sospir,
caro nome, tuo sarà."

[Dorian M. Black]

Dorian does not speak Italian, which may benefit his sanity.

"I doubt it, lest you wish to correct my oversight," he requests lightly.

It's a challenge, naturally, you'd be a fool not to see it. But he doesn't seem to put much weight behind the expectation of a response. His eyes are back on the tired lines of ink and journal articles.

[Christine Daye]

It's easier to talk, sometimes, when the parties to the conversation are not looking at each other.

Christine shuffles the Verdi to one side, resumes flicking through the scores until she finds one she likes the look of. She starts to read it, absently responding to Dorian's challenge.

"Mr Black, you are a scientist, or so I have been lead to believe. You then must understand that... obsession... that drives you to study... to perfect your art.

"But you are also a man, obviously wealthy, with the resources and freedom to choose your path... within limits, but then all of us are subject to such, to a greater or lesser extent.

"My art is no less demanding, but to be a woman... well, I'm sure that you are aware of the... scandal... that can attach to any woman who dares to set foot on stage..."

She turns the page, hums a phrase.

"Oh, that is pleasant! I shall remember that..."

She pauses to make a note in her notebook.

"...I could choose to divest myself of Maestra... but then I would have less time for my music... for I would be forced to deal with the tiresome business arrangements of contracts and the like... I would lose my jealously guarded respectability that allows me to play for the highest in Society, despite my well known madness... and I would lose the care and guardianship of an elder who loves me... and whom I love as a parent..."

She hums another phrase, makes another note.

"Walls are shelter and protection, Mr Black, not just imprisonment."