By the time they reached town, Remi was barely walking, if dragging your toes over the ground could be called that. Harry had his left arm gripped tightly over his shoulders, supporting what he could of the slayer’s weight with his other arm slung under his ribcage. The vampire’s thoughts wandered through what, if he’d his ‘druthers, he could do with this particular position. Remi’s thoughts wandered sort of willy-nilly. He was bleeding all over Harry’s pretty clothes.
“‘M bleedn’ nall ofer yer pretty cloagthsnnns...” he thought he said.
“Clothes are replaceable. Fragile humanity is not.”
“Iken walk’n myown,” Remi said and sort of swished his toes back and forth. This was a good sign, as it at least meant he could still operate his limbs.
“I have heard more ridiculous pronouncements,” Harry said, hitching the slayer up a little higher on his hip, “But they’re more generally along the lines of, ‘no, please, I can prove useful to you,’ and ‘have mercy!’ Or ‘I want to be a vampire too!’”
“Foul Deeemon!” Remi roared, lifting his head up only to find his neck was still bothersomely elastic. Harry righted it.
“Of course I didn’t forget your constant and admirable dedication to eradication of the forces of darkness, which ostensibly may be named your ‘profession’, Remi. I am well aware that, as soon as you’re chipper again, you’ll be about your slaying and nonsense with enviable focus of will. Vampires everywhere will shake in their boots. You needn’t worry your little head with that.”
Somehow, and maybe it was the soft rumbling of the vampire’s voice sympathetically vibrating through his chest while he spoke, Remi found that this acknowledgment calmed him. Could’ve been blood loss, too, though. Must stay aware of options.
“How could I forget, really, unless fantasizing that piece of wood sticking into my ribs to be something it isn’t. Though I still yet may hope to be mistaken.”
Remi’s head shot up from where it had lolled against his shoulder. Harry cursed, and then cursed more when he realized nobody could appreciate his exceptional eye-roll at his companion’s prudery. It might take a while for thoughts to process in that confused and web-ridden melon, but the percolation wasn’t as slow as he thought it’d be. Harry could see the blood squirting out of Remi’s arm (what a waste!) a little bit faster as his face reddened.
“Look, an inn!” Harry said as if an inn were a rare African game-bird, and hitching Remi up higher with an agonizing jar before the slayer could decide to throw himself into a well as repentance for figuring out what exactly he’d said.
Harry wasn’t averse to appearing exactly as he was to folks (what were they going to do about it anyway), but for Remi’s sake he would normally aver. However, Remi seemed to have fallen unconscious, and that made Harry concerned. It had been many years since Harry had to be concerned with the various stages of injury, if, in fact, he’d ever been so uncouth as to be grievously injured, but he was at least passing sure that unconsciousness was bad. He kicked open the heavy wooden door of the inn, sending splinters flying from its lock and hinges as the wood suffered odd pressure-bursts around them. Remi could be angry with him when he was conscious again. Right now, the body slumped over Harry’s shoulder was too distressingly weak to be upset over his grand entrance.
The peasants stood like cornered hares as Harry cleared away the largest table, setting Remi down as gently as haste would allow. Remi obliged his gentleness by waking up and muttering something about the ceiling.
“Indeed, Remi, that is some fine English oak, and, if I may, I would compliment you on your extensive knowledge of the varieties of wood and the quick recognition thereof.” Harry kicked a few more chairs aside and, rolling up his sleeves and keeping up the diatribe, made his vest into a pillow for the slayer’s head. “It never fails to surprise me, the various nooks and crannies of knowledge crammed into that disorganized brain. Nay, I could say even, I find it endearing. What I do find more surprising, however, is the lack of assistance we are receiving, or did you bumpkins fail to take notice of the man BLEEDING TO DEATH on your table?”
Those that had been cowering upon Harry’s hissing reprimand leapt back into being. All it took were a few icy glares back and forth before the townsfolk sprang into action, or, if they could not, out the door. The innkeeper came forward, producing clean cloths and a jug of whiskey from behind the bar. Harry wasn’t at all certain what to do to make Remi more comfortable, or even to stop his bleeding. As it was, having all that blood all over him, and that agonizingly new and fresh blood, brought up an unseemly conflict between his gentlemanly disdain for further damaging his clothes with bodily fluids, and his intense desire to not let it go to waste. The pressing question of what exactly Remi’s self-righteous blood would actually taste like... Harry moved away from the wound just before the bartender covered it with a slop of the unpleasant smelling whiskey. His questioning glance was met with a lackadaisical shrug of the bartender’s rounded and sloped shoulders. Let humanity deal with humanity.
Harry was averse to admitting it, but he was distressed. While the bartender alternately took swigs, gave him mistrustful looks, and washed out Remi’s wounds with liquor, he felt susceptible to tapping his foot, folding his arms, or even, though damned be the imposition, pacing. His first fingernail had already been ruined by an unconscious chewing, although the instant the stained hand had touched his mouth he’d felt the heady surge of human warmth he’d been resisting all evening. It hadn’t kept him from chewing his nail, but the danger of feeling it again had kept him from foolishly embarking upon another.
How frustrating that Remi would be so unkind as to force him into such a position of indignity. Imagine! Him! Pacing like a fishwife while wringing his hands over an idiotic mortal!
Ha!
If Remi didn’t wake up soon, he didn’t know what he’d do.
Well, in fact, Harry knew exactly what he’d do should Remi not awaken, ...and after perhaps a spat or two, with strength all saved up, what he’d convince Remi to do, and then, hopefully again, at least a few, or many more times...
But, for the sake of his friend’s belief in his imperiled immortal soul, he was restrained even in that joyful contemplation. Ridiculous as Remi’s stubborn belief in the tarnished nature of his soul seemed to Harry, now was no time for the vampire to be snickering behind his hand. Remi’s stubbornness had kept him alive in a half-dozen other dire situations; with the direness of this particular one pressing on him, Harry couldn’t mock his stubbornness lightly.
As if hearing Harry’s contemplations, Remi stirred, and flung another half-smashed stake at the bartender. It bounced off his chest, while he looked affronted at the splinters now floating in his jug. He took a swig and moved on to the next wound. Harry was at Remi’s side in a moment.
“Are you done throwing things? Really, I’m quite sure you’ve impositioned enough of the fiends of darkness tonight, Remi.”
Remi’s head lolled back and forth once, and he mumbled something that sounded vaguely like an apology.
Harry grew more nervous, “Come now, no banter, though it be of questionable wit? When have you ever apologized for defending the sinless masses? Surely innocent humanity will defend your zealousness? Surely you have something to say about my relative proximity to sin, or the value of your mercy?”
Remi’s eyes opened blearily, blinking out of time with each other, and he smiled. A blissful, easy smile, with fogged sight, unfocused causes, serene expectation...
The bartender poured swill into the hole in his arm and Remi roared, pulling up from the table and launching a fistful of oregano at the bartender that hit like a snowball and went on to pepper his potation with bright chunks of zesty Mediterranean flavor. Flooded by relief, Harry held the slayer down as he winced and spat and tried to crawl off the table.
What was left of the door swung morosely to the side to allow the doctor in, who didn’t stop even a single pace to look at Harry’s bloodstained clothes, or at Remi’s odd equipment, or at the relative damage to the facilities. He set his bag down, knocked off his beaver hat and set to rolling up his sleeves, spectacles sliding down his nose in stern disapproval of everyone who was not a doctor.
Harry looked for some uninjured part to reassure Remi with, and could only find his hand (which was good, because if Harry had Remi’s hand, he couldn’t do whatever he was intending to do with the rest of his stakes, or herbs, or whatever else the silly bastard had construed to use as a weapon of the holy good. As a matter of fact, Harry set the bartender to removing said objects of defense, as reassurance could doubly function as restraint).
“Remi, I charge you with good behavior, this man is a doctor, and I presume that means he has some proficiency in keeping you alive.”
Looking at the doctor, and the doctor’s glare at hearing this pronouncement, Harry doubted this. Nonetheless, he let a certain delicate show of force and flash of fangs let the doctor know how serious he was. Remi mumbled something about beaver-hatted archfiends before wincing as his wounds were tampered with. Harry wasn’t certain that was good. He kept hold of Remi’s hand for a few moments, before realizing he was in the way. He patted Remi’s shoulder, feeling the clunk of the wooden slats sewn into his vest.
Things now passing beyond his control, he let his friend be taken up in the risky business of staying alive, while he gave himself up to weakness, sat in the corner and chewed on preternatural fingernails.
Remi thought for a while that this was death.
Then he remembered there’d be lakes of fire and was duly disappointed. These weren’t lakes of fire. This was just bloody bunch of nothing. Fah! Remi wasn’t afraid of nothing.
As if on cue he heard a wavery voice, the ethereal sound of distant children giggling, as it passed over the swamps of his childhood. Ah! What sweet relief! Memories of bygone days of youth! Yes, there was the house, up on stilts and always threatening to lean, a fake veranda reaching down to the ground in order to soothe his proud parents’ love of the elegance of their original homeland (which Remi understood was a much colder swamp much farther north). The white paint sat in curls as the bottom of every wall, eaten away by the humidity, and his father was out, no doubt painting some other refugee’s house. Most of the time when he was home, he could be found outside upon a tall pontoon latter, earning his wages by repainting their own house, as he did daily. Being an honest man, he always remembered to pay himself for repainting their own peeling yellow railings.
Remi thought with some fondness on the place, in spite of all the thick limbed trees that rose like iron bars, and the occasionally dire threatening of the beasts. His past couldn’t frighten him, either. His past was serene. It was pastoral. It was idyllic, even if it wasn’t in the land of his forefathers, from which his family had been expelled due a drastic shift in policy regarding families such as own, apparently hinging upon the fact that, as his father said, ‘they wouldn’t betray their country just because the government asked them to.’ Or it was something like that. He was always drunk when he talked about it, which gave Remi the impression that the confused wording was just a fault of the drink, albeit one continuously repeated. Remi’s past was... Acadian.
Nevertheless, this was no Hell amongst his days of innocence. Why, one might even be tempted to think that he had not even gone to Hell! Such was the glorious peace of his halcyon days!
Remi was reconsidering his position on the ‘threatening’ presence of Satan in the minds as men, as he floated inconsiderate of his surroundings, when as if wrapp’d in a sweet dream, he found himself turning in his survey towards the ill-advised little barn they had build on their property, despite the fact that they had no fields nor could keep any livestock on their land. At once, Remi’s mind fled to those gay days of adolescence, when many an hour was frittered away in idle enjoyment of life and nature, with highly philosophical overtones to be explored later in lengthy poetic treatises... If he hadn’t turned out to be irredeemably sinful. Redemption hadn’t left him much time for poetry. Drifting serenely over the swamp gasses came a light-hearted girl’s giggle, and a phrase he remembered all too well, “Oh, Remi, what’s wrong with you, anyway?”
Shit. Shitshitshit. Merde.
Remi tried to turn and push himself into the swamp, to get lost in some other dream of his wonderful youth, but again, more like unto a dream one which one didn’t want to have at all, he was drawn inevitably onward until, shoulders hunched and hands firmly covering his eyes, he was back behind the barn.
He didn’t really need to open his eyes, he knew there would be standing Alouette Thibodeau, of the great Thibodeau clan. She was twelve and Remi was thirteen, they’d been playing catch-me or some such, like children do, and then one thing had led to another, and they’d been holding hands an awful lot, and now Remi was sort of pressed up against the back of the barn trying to figure out exactly what he’d done wrong, which was a more common position for him with women than even he, in his youthful ignorance, thought was normal. It also meant a lot of them had gotten him behind barns though. And a lot them ended up like Aloutte Thibodeau:
“C’mon, boy, do you think I’m not pretty?”
...That is to say: disappointed.
She put her hands on her hips over her bright yellow dress, elbows out almost as far as her pouting lip. Oh, Remi knew the answer to that one.
“No! You’re beautiful.”
“Then kiss me!”
Remi, at the time, didn’t know why he didn’t want to, and this was a more dangerous position than any other he could be in. Not knowing meant that he couldn’t give himself a reason why not to do it. Not having a reason why not meant he did it anyway (retrospectively, as an adult, he could see this feature of his reason popping up quite a bit, and usually with about the same amount of wisdom). The young Remi boldly leaned forward, lips out, and she did the same, and they kissed like children, though she still kissed better than he. The adult Remi tried to flee, to no avail.
They backed away from one another, her with a happy grin on her face, he looking... confused.
“Well?” She asked.
Remi shrugged, and suffered for his maleness, “Nope. Nothin’.”
There was a loud noise.
“Stop throwing things, especially pointy wooden things....”
His back hurt, his hand was restrained, oh wait, many things hurt... but wasn’t that nice? Harry was holding his hand again.
“Remi, I can’t emphasize enough that this man is a doctor, and not a demonic seraph, and ideally he will keep your pathetic body lumping along in its entirely mortal fashion. However inconvenient I may find it.”
Remi reacted as well as could be expected, what with the stinging of the alcohol and loss of blood and made a rude gesture at the vampire with his free hand. Harry patted the other.
“You’ll be fine.”
Dream-Remi had shut his eyes, one leg up, covering his head with his hands, but when he opened them the scene had changed. He didn’t want to see anymore of his youth. He really wasn’t interested, he could remember well enough thank you, but, still...
They were outside a local dance hall. It was some four years later. Striking similarities abounded... There was Alouette, hands on her hips just the same, off to the side, and there he was, older, still confused, having just been slapped, backed up to the dance hall wall...
Except that standing in front of him was...
“Amaury, I’m tellin’ you, there’s somethin’ wrong with that boy!”
Amaury was 22, about a foot taller than Remi, and twice as broad at the shoulders and also Aloutte’s very defensive older brother. Rumor around town was that he’d run off to join the army, chased an entire enemy unit away, and come back because there was nothing for him to do. It didn’t explain why he had to hide in his uncle’s moonshine still every time a government official came through, but they all chalked that up to not wanting the officials to feel embarrassed they were having to come by to ask for his help again. So he was a bit intimidating; Remi would be forgiven by the locals for not being keen to fight him for his sister’s honor.
Remi didn’t want to fight anyone for anyone’s sister’s honor (not in the least because he didn’t deserve it, as he was almost certain he hadn’t ruined any), but that didn’t seem to be the way Amaury thought of things. And Amaury got to think of things however he wanted because he could kick the piss out of everyone in town.
Furthermore, he was very handsome, not that the young Remi had ever noticed, or was noticing now, in spite of his strangling fear of being minced. Remi was busy trying to excuse himself to an irate, and unsatisfied, belle. “I don’t know what happened Alouette, but I’m sorry and I’ll never do it again.”
That always worked before, dear God, let it work now...
“It’s more a matter of what you ain’t done, Remi,” she grumbled folding her arms across her chest.
Remi felt hands on his shoulders turning him around, and, while not a coward, he blanched. Amaury pushed him up against the dance hall wall.
“Well, let’s see what’s going on then.”
Adult Remi could no longer cower. He knew what was coming next, and that there was no avoiding it. Amaury leaned down and pressed his lips to Remi’s, much to the disgust of his sister, and then, after perhaps the longest moment in history, even longer than when he had been asked to help his great grandmother bathe, pulled away. Remi was frozen. Remi remembered thinking then that he’d probably died and didn’t even know it. His dream-self was rather unamused about the fact that he hadn’t. Amaury let Remi go and wiped his lips with the back of his sleeve, an amused frown on his face. His eyes roamed downward.
“Boy... you’re queer as two Sundays.”
“Shit,” said Alouette.
He couldn’t help but echo her sentiment. Remi had been right. This was Hell.
The dream faded.