Season Notes: violence

Nastasia

When I was able to stop crying finally, I washed my face with cold water and put on the best confident smile I could.

I stepped back into the overcrowded motel room and pretended not to see the concern on everyone’s faces. “Sorry I took so long. I know you all probably want to get clean too.”

After a moment, Leyla started stripping off her gear. “None of us are too bad,” she said, “and you take all the time you need — it’s been a long day for all of us. But hot water — if this place has any — will feel good.”

“Amen,” Victor said from the room’s single chair. He’d pulled it up to the window and aside from that one glance at me, looked like he was dozing. “I can wait for my turn, though. Sleep first.”

I took a deep breath and decided to take a chance. “If you really wanted to sleep, you should be in bed,” I teased.

He turned enough to flash a grin at me, giving me a chance to see him in profile. For a moment, my breath caught and I just wanted to trace the lines of his face.

“Naw,” he said. “Not going to interfere with the honeymoon.”

I blinked. When that didn’t help I looked around the room, like an answer might have popped out from a corner somewhere. “What?”

It kind of did. Benj was sitting in one of the corners cleaning one of his guns. He chuckled and said, “We figure the love birds get the bed tonight.” He ducked his head and I was pretty sure he was flushing as hard as I was. “Hell of a wedding night, but we can pretend not to listen.”

Luna help me, did he just… he did… Leyla winked at me as she headed for the bathroom. “Don’t worry, there’s always plenty of cold water for showers at these places.”

And somehow she made it okay. And I was laughing, laughing until tears rolled down my face. Until I sank to the floor, sobs mixed in with laughter turned hysterical.

Leyla’s voice. “I’m going to hug you now.”

I couldn’t answer, but I nodded. Nodded and nodded and… arms were around me. The door opened, closed, and my chest eased as Karen was there. “Oh,” she was saying, as a large hand rested on my shoulder, “It’s time. I should have known, but I don’t have a timeline for this. Should I have a timeline for this?”

“It happens to everyone,” Leyla said as Karen paused. “After a bad fight — and your first fight is always a bad fight — we all get hit somehow.

“I don’t… I don’t…”

“They’re right, Nastasia,” Marcus’ steady voice from behind me. “And your first firefight on top of, well, everything. If you hadn’t crashed soon I would have worried.”

The reassurance from my sotii, from my first, was that last straw. The tears in the bathroom were nothing compared to this. Finally, still crying, I fell asleep.

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Marcus

Marcus picked Nastasia up and carefully moved her to the bed.

“Have we heard from the others?”

Leyla nodded. “The grandparents are in place. As planned, they’ll observe the town for folks following us and do what they can to erase those identities. Ozanna thinks they’ll be able to meet us in a week.

“Vasile and Marsha are at a motel down the road. I didn’t give them our exact location, but they know we’re nearby. They still expect us to go with them to meet the rest of the clan tomorrow.”

For a moment no one said anything. The silence was… eloquent.

“That’ll be up to Nastasia,” Marcus said, “But I take it I’m not the only one with concerns.”

Karen had moved to sit next to Nastasia on the bed. In her sleep, Nastasia wrapped herself around Karen. For a moment, Marcus wanted nothing more than to lie down with them. To feel Nastasia close to him after the painful separation he had forced on them. (It was the vampire magic, he reminded himself. But he remembered how her voice had affected him from the first moment and wondered…)

“I don’t like the timing,” Benj was saying.

Marcus compromised with himself by sitting on the floor next to the bed. Not touching, but close enough he could hear Nastasia’s breathing.

Karen was nodding. “The timeline is weird. It’s… not wrong? Not…” she grumbled and pulled out a knife and honing rod. “I thought I was missing a people thing again.”

Victor, from the window, grunted.

“Victor, you have first watch. Trade-off every two hours and keep your weapons close.”

They’d worked together long enough that he didn’t need to set a specific watch order. But Nastasia’s breath tickling the back of his neck made him hesitate. She’d moved closer to him, and Karen had put away her knives to lie down behind Nastasia.

“She’ll want a turn too,” Benj said softly, and Marcus nodded.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’m not going to shut her out again.”

“Better not,” Victor muttered.

“But we don’t need six trading off tonight and we need to get her read in on how we handle things.”

Leyla turned to look at him and he sighed. “Yeah, and see what changes she wants to make.”

Including Nastasia in the team, now that he’d pulled his head out, was easy. Accepting that he wasn’t in charge any more… that would take some time.

But he was proud of his– their team. After the day they’d had, some teams would have started fracturing under the stress. Instead, they were pulling together — and pulling together to stand with Nastasia, not exclude her.

It also made the warmth in his chest he was beginning to recognize as part of the vampire magic relax and pulse with happiness.

That was also going to take some getting used to.

As he got comfortable as he could and let himself drift off, he rememered being a boy playing knights and dragons. He’d known even then that boys like him didn’t get to be knights.

So he became a soldier instead, and a damn good one. He didn’t know how to be anything else.

He didn’t entirely know what to make of the whole sotii thing. But he remembered the moment in the basement when he pledged himself to her and meant it. Somewhere in him, he heard the /shing/ of a sword being drawn.

The /shing/ was fake. Learning it was a folly effect had been one of the saddest days of his childhood, but that didn’t make the sword fake.

He was Marcus of the Lună Clan now, and /his/ lady slept behind him, trusting him to guard her.

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