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She has held Isaac throughout most of the night in her embrace, as he cried on her shoulder over his lost friend, over his newfound purpose and dear humanity, over the feelings that they share between each other. Back in his room, she has wiped his tears away, has allowed him to get lost in their kisses. And when the sighs turned into moans, when his cries turned from hurt to pleasure, she dropped to her knees in front of him, hands working fast to undo his belt, pull at his pants.
“Wh-what are you doing?”
His voice sounded soft, lost, needy – more than anything else. She said nothing, hands already working on his cock. Both of them still in their clothes, just his member out. Isaac’s cheeks burned, for they looked like nothing but two too desperate lovers, rushing for release.
Her mouth was close, blowing hot air over him, and he whined, pushing his hips closer. She kissed the tip of his cock, before her tongue started lapping around him. Isaac’s entire body shuddered, when she took him in, all of him past her lips – and she hollowed her cheeks, his hands flying to twist in her hair. Instinctually, needy, he started moving, pulling out a bit, entering her warmth again, fucking her mouth. She hummed, and he swore.
One of her hands was digging in his clothed thigh, painful despite the material. The other one started playing with his balls.
“Gods!” Isaac exclaimed, and her movements were meeting his, bringing him closer and closer to his release.
He tried to pull out, but her hands hooked around his waist, keeping him in place – and he came inside her. She sucked; opening her mouth to show him that all is gone once done. Isaac felt dizzy and light, and she chuckled, kissing the top of his dick again, helping him back into his clothes.
She laid him out in bed, playing with her hands in his hair. His hand tightened around her waist.
“What about you?” he asked.
She said nothing, just shook her head and kissed his forehead, held him close as sleep took him. She stayed like that for a long time, until the light of the morning started filtering through – and as careful as she could, she left him behind.
She’s still thinking of those shared moments, as she sits in an armchair in le Comte’s office, staring at her hands. Her dress, out of which she hasn’t changed yet, is stained in the blood of the person she loves the most, and his dead friend. The shirt turned red under her own blood is still unwashed, in one of the drawers in her room.
Her hands are trembling, as she’s staring at the hourglass on the table in front of her. She can barely see the sand left on top of it anymore. She’s terribly cold.
“Ma chérie…” Comte sighs, when he enters and notices her there. He looks exhausted.
He seems to have guessed what this is about, at least to some extent; and he doesn’t sound the least surprised. Oh well, she thinks, maybe this has been coming since the beginning, and no matter how much she fought against it, the epilogue of this story has already been written.
The cup of black coffee that he offers her shakes in her hold, and Comte is staring intently at her reactions, at the lost look in her eyes, at the determination in her shoulders.
“I want to return to my days,” she says.
The ticking of his clock goes on, ten times, before Comte sighs.
“Of course, ma chérie. No problem. But – does he know?”
A bit of the coffee spills on her already ruined dress. One of her hands is crumpling the material in her hold.
“He will,” she answers, vaguely.
His touch on her shoulder is comforting, and she leans just a bit into his touch.
“Can I do anything for you?” he asks, and his thumb is tracing patterns over her skin.
She wants to cry. Instead, she just shakes her head, gets up.
“Thank you for… everything, Comte.”
She somehow still manages to smile.
Isaac is late for breakfast, so Sebastian sends her up to his room instead. She wants to deny the task, but there’s no real excuse for it – and the last thing she wants is for the other men in the house to know what she has in her mind before the actual day.
He is awake, but still in bed, under his blankets; still somewhat lost into his own century. Her heart squeezes in her chest, as she places the tray on his desk, taking just the bottle of blanc with her. She can’t help getting close, kissing the top of his head in greeting. Isaac smiles at her – no, beams at her, like she’s bringing all the light in his life, like she’s the sun who makes the dark disappear. She almost throws up, steels herself instead.
If she can’t go through this, then she cannot expect of herself to pass the threshold of that door, back in the clutches of the 21st century life. It’s the beating of her heart, each one counting another second passing by, that eventually grounds her.
She watches him drink and eat, and she tries to memorize everything: the arch of his eyebrows, the delicacy in doing something as simple as that, the curve of his lips when he catches her eyes. She loves him so much she doesn’t have words, so much that it hurts.
“Isaac…” He looks up, something in her voice already telling him something is wrong. “Today is my last day here.”
He chokes.
“Wh-what?” he croaks, looking incredulously at her.
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Where?” He asks dumbly, and he feels pathetic, and this is the first problem he ever encountered that he doesn’t have the immediate answer to.
She reluctantly glances up at him, her brows furrowing at the expression on his face, like he’s hanged in the moment before being stroked down. She moves a bit closer, cradling his face in her hands. He can’t fix his eyes on her.
“Two hundred years from now…. find me,” is all she says.
“Please,” he begs, holding onto her wrists. “You… You’re breaking my heart.”
She tries not to look at Isaac’s face, knowing that if she sees the expression on there, the resolve in her will break apart. But she cannot stay here, living and dying in a world unknown, just because she loves one man. Even if that man managed to so easily become her everything. She loves him, which is why she has the courage to be selfish.
“But I’m saving mine,” she whispers, and he rests his forehead on hers, trying to anchor himself.
If she is to live out the rest of the years left in her, then she wants to do it home. With him by her side, that would be bliss – but she doesn’t want it here. So, she compromises. Or rather, she asks a compromise of him.
If he is to still love her, centuries after her departure, then he will find her, waiting, in her own time. He sobs.
“You’re so unfair…”
She leans closer to him; his arms embrace her with ease, and she places kisses all over his face, feeling the salt in his tears on her lips. She won’t apologize for asking this of him, and he knows it. He can’t find it in himself to be upset over it.
“Isaac…,” she sighs out his name. “I’m just a human. My lifespan is nothing compared to the eternity laid out in front of you. I want to live it on my own terms.”
If he were to answer what haunts him most vividly, constantly, painfully from his life before, then it’s those few seconds of dying, when you know the darkness is coming, and yet there’s nothing you can do to fight it. The incredible fear of not actually coming back, even if he was promised it.
So he can’t hold it against her. He can only hold her close.
***
Dazai is the one accompanying her, the rest of the guys waiting for her next to the door. He shakes his head at her.
“This doesn’t sit well with me, Toshiko-san…”
“It’s okay,” she tries to smile. “It doesn’t have to.”
She makes them all wait until the very last minute, because there’s a particular someone who is missing from the gathering. She tries to excuse it as hugging everyone goodbye. Napoleon lingers a bit in his hold, reproach and hope mingled in his touch. She can’t look at him when she moves away.
Then le Comte’s hand is at her back, slowly pulling her out of her pain, guiding her back to where it all started in the first place. It feels like the time that passed is way longer than 25 days, and way shorter too.
“You should get going,” he says, and even his voice is gentle.
She touches the wooden door, takes a deep breath – then she hears steps, and her heart soars. She turns to the sound, and Isaac is standing in front of her, panting, dressed only in a white shirt, jacket forgotten behind: hurried and broken and, still, hers.
She refrains from touching him. He doesn’t come any closer. They stare at each other for a bit, so many unsaid words hanging between them.
“I trust you,” she apologizes.
“Then you’re nothing but a fool,” he spits out.
But she knows it’s just because he’s watching her break his heart. She turns her back to him, opens a door and walks through time. Her name, a chocked sob on his lips, is the last thing she hears.
She learns exactly 25 days have passed in her time as well. Paris, ten times more populated than two centuries ago, never felt so empty or lonely.
She’s late on rent; decides to search for a new place, and make this city in the heart of Europe her new permanent home; based on hope alone. She takes up a new language course. She writes long articles on the Van Gogh brothers, visiting multiple museums, researching. She visits England often, with her work. She falls a bit more in love with it every time, because it holds a part of him. She always makes time to check out at least one of the places in his memories. She fills an entire shelf in her apartment with novels that she thinks Isaac might grow to like, fallen in the gap of time that separates them.
So that when – if, she corrects, he returns, he will return knowing that she has waited for him.
One month after she returns, there’s a letter waiting for her in the mailbox. Only her first name on the envelope, no stamp. Her hands shake; she drops her keys three times before she’s able to get inside. She knows there’s no point in looking around her, le Comte probably having already left a long time ago.
She can recognize his handwriting too – on the paper inside the envelope as well. It’s dated 23 January 1889, and it’s a general update on everyone in the manor. She feels like she’s about to suffocate, her brain unable to make the time jumps that pure blood vampires seem to have no problems with. Still, she accepts it gratefully, cradles it at her chest. For many days in a row, the paper is left sitting on the side of the bed that she never occupies.
There’s only one sentence about Isaac: He’s drowning in his research, and it is telling her nothing, and it is telling her everything. She cries bitter tears, for him.
It doesn’t show the next night, when she works on a photoshoot. The phone numbers left by several workers, she throws them in the trash. She starts wearing a golden band on her ring finger, just so the attention dies out.
She’s aware, how stupid she might seem to the rational side of herself: building a future on the belief that several weeks of love will make-up for a betrayal worth centuries. But she’s anything but rational, as she moves on with her life.
And the letters never stop; so she must not be the only one stuck with the memories of those days stuck in her heart. Dazai and Sebastian co-write a letter in Japanese, dated 1906. Next comes a neat, small package: and inside she finds the ribbon she wore once, back when the constant feeling entirely bloomed in her heart now was just beginning to sprung. She stares at it, not knowing what to make of it – panic overtaking her, her breath hitching in her throat, sob half-formed stuck inside her body. Is this an echo of the past, a mirrored gift… or just Isaac’s way of saying there’s no need for him to have anything of hers? She still wears it.
Then comes Napoleon’s note: He’s counting down to the day he meets you, down to the seconds. It’s 1938 when he writes it – and she sticks it up on her wall. No matter how much she wants it, Isaac never writes to her directly. Still, isn’t it enough that he’s allowing the others to tell her all these things? No, the same selfish part of her that put her in this situation in the first place is saying, but she’s set on never asking anything of him ever again, in this wretched life that she decided to call his.
She spends afternoons piecing together the Isaac he’s becoming, in her absence. The distance keeps getting smaller, until – one day, on the first days of winter, she bumps into someone familiar while on her usual work routine.
“Theodorus?” her voice is weak, and yet the man in question still turns around, to look at her.
“Oh,” is all he says, and it feels like she’s just been cut in half by that single sound. He does his best not to flinch when she grabs his hand.
“Theo, please, is he… is he here?”
He grabs her hand, moves it away, and yet there’s still some kind of gentleness even in that refusal. She’s staring at her palms, trembling, before raising her head, facing him head on, repeating her question.
He shakes his head. The world tilts and she looks like she’s about to fain.
“Breathe, Knabbeltje,” Theo orders, and she does, hungry and desperate gulps of air. “He’s in England, for a while.”
She nods, turns on her heels and leaves. She cannot remember if she properly even thanked him. She played with time like she owned it, so she has no way of knowing if for a while means her entire lifetime or a few weeks or months. She drags her jacket closer to her body. She’s so, so cold.
She wears a red scarf; not to match all the Christmas cheer and decorations around her, but because it reminds her of Isaac’s most worn jacket. She meets no one; walks around the stalls, takes a couple of photos, tastes ginger bread and chocolate from various places, ends up with a hot cup of mulled wine in her hands, as she stops to admire this year’s Christmas tree.
She stands there for a while, content with just sipping from her drink, body turning colder and colder the more she doesn’t move. People are good at avoiding her, passing her by for photos in front of the lights, which is why the person stopping right by her side, just as unmoving as her, immediately catches her attention.
She checks her wristwatch, past midnight; she can feel the other’s eyes on her – and it’s a watch that’s been broken and repaired once, in the 19th century. She softly shakes the snowflakes from her scarf, and refuses to really look at whoever joined her when she speaks.
“Happy Birthday, Isaac.”
He hooks a hand around her elbow, pulling until she faces him. Where he touches her, her body warms up.
He carries over two centuries of separation, while she only had to wait months to see him again. A terrible burden to have him to bear; yet Isaac looks like he’s always done, when in her vicinity: lit up from the inside, with love.
She feels her feet giving out below her; he’s next to her, keeping her up, his arms looping around her waist. He’s so close now that she can’t think. He smells different now, soft soap and just the tiny bit of sweetness.
He hisses, hard, when she looks up at him and they make eye contact. He wants to let go, but she grabs him by his coat, keeps him right there, having her in his arms. His eyes go wide.
“Is it- you… you’re real? Is it you, indeed?”
She nods, biting her lower lip so she won’t cry. His fingers dig into her sides, painful even through the clothes. There’s something in his eyes that she didn’t see before – and she knows, that whatever choice she made on that day, it affected him more. And it was close to unbearable for her as it is.
“Speak,” he demands.
“Isaac,” she says, and he shivers against her. Of course, her voice is as it’s always been, maybe just tinged with a more desperate yearning around his name.
He kisses her, desperately, quite literally taking her breath away. His tongue is at her lips in an instant, hungry – and she opens her mouth against his eagerly. What distance is between them, the layers of clothes; it’s all too much.
“Found you,” he says.
He pounds into her, and her mind goes blank, a river of curses and moans out of her mouth. She grasps at his shoulders, pulling him closer still, spreading her legs wider, allowing him even more space, to hit her spot just right. It hurt at first; he took her the second the clothes were to the floor, entering her with no warning or preparation – and yet she’s getting fucked so good she’s finding herself melting in pleasure.
“When,” she pants, “did you learn to fuck like this?”
Her toes curl in the sheets, as he fills her completely, stilling inside of her. He rolls his hips, drawing out a loud mewl of his name out of her, and he curses at the sight, her face lost in pleasure, skin flushed all over.
He nips at the skin at her neck, nuzzling at the crook of her neck; the gesture gentle compared to the way he’s been pounding inside of her just a few moments ago.
“I’ve had centuries to imagine you like this,” his hands are tracing her body, stopping to cradle her boobs in his palms, fingertips playing with her nipples. She gasps, biting her lips.
“So,” she starts, and is interrupted by her own moans, as his mouth descends on her chest. “No… womanly adventures with Arthur?”
He stops, his touches gone in just an instant, and Isaac’s expression darkens. He moves one hand on her thigh, spreading her legs open, to the point her muscles burn; the other at her navel, pinning her down to the mattress. Then, he starts pounding in her: wild and fast, back and forth, slamming in her. Her body hitches, her voice hoarse with the scream that first shove inside her makes her feel. She can hear the wet sounds of her arousals, the slaps of his skin on hers.
“To think,” he grunts, and the lewd sound of his dick slamming inside her accompanies his words. “that you’re out here with th-these,” another, and this time he hits her g-spot, and she moans. “assumptions about me, and I’m-” his body lowers, his tongue lapping at her neck “still fucking you.”
He chuckles against her skin, the breath of air at her ear driving her wild with need, as his pounding is incessant.
“Isaa-aah! More, p-please, mo-”
Her voice dies out, because his fangs are against her skin, piercing it. He bites her; the mixture of pain and pleasure sending her over the edge as he drinks her blood. She can feel herself squeezing him, she can hear him moaning. His face looks like he’s a man in pain, and despite it, he still moves inside her, helping her ride out her release. There’s blood trickling down her neck, on her boobs, and she looks sweaty and flushed and entirely spent – and he’s been waiting for this for too long.
“Look at you,” he says, fascination and disgust in one, and he can feel her squeezing him. “To think you still took it so well, even from someone who had to practice for it.”
“Isaac!” her voice is indignant.
He’s still hard inside her, and he rolls his hips, her voice lost in a moan. He moves, licking around her nipples, sucking the sensitive buds one by one, as she writhes underneath him.
“How many men stretched you before, for you to be such a good little slut?”
Her cheeks burn with shame at his words, and her pussy throbs with need. He bites against the thin stick of her left breast, though he doesn’t drink this time around. He just leaves the marks over her body, blood mingling with the sweat of their bodies as he starts pumping inside of her again.
She moans out his name, time and time again.
“Answer me,” he snarls, moving to pin down her hands above her head, shifting their position, his chest pressed against hers. She looks absolutely fucked out, eyes rolling to the back of her head which each hit deep inside her, and yet when he commands it, she does as asked.
“No one, gods--, no one!”
He releases her, a hand of his moving where their bodies connect, finding her clit, tantalizingly pressing against it. Her breath hitches in her throat, her hands grabbing in the air for something to hold onto, finding nothing.
“Then cum for me,” Isaac says, and she does.
He continues snapping his hips to hers, coming as well in just three more pumps, way before she comes down from the high of her second orgasm. He drags a hand through his hair, wet with sweat. She’d like to do the same, her chest constricting. He starts pulling out, and she’s suddenly scared, grabs at his shoulder to keep him in place.
“Can we – can we stay like this for a bit?” she’s shy when asking, not expecting for her request to be granted. She’s already stepping all over the rules she came up with on her own.
He holds her, as he moves her to lay down on top of him. She can feel his cum trickling down between their bodies, yet she basks in her afterglow, and in the feeling of having him at all. She’s tracing patterns over his chest with her finger.
His eyes catch her ring. He frowns. She shivers.
“You should get cleaned up,” he says, and he’s helping her spent body once again.
She presses her palm between her legs. He can’t stop staring at her cunt, as she’s doing her utmost best to keep his cum inside of her. She’s whimpering with each touch of her finger against her folds, hypersensitive.
Isaac leaves; returns from the bathroom with a wet cloth. He catches her eyes, a question in his, a resolution in hers. He approaches to help clean her up, and she takes her hand, her glistening fingers – and presses them against her tongue. Isaac can feel his dick stirring again, and he decides not to look at her at all.
He’s moving as gently as he can, though the material is rougher than her fingers, and the whimpers are louder this time around. She’s hugging herself, arms around her chest – tired, but feeling still hurt by his care and attention.
“Do you hate me?” she mumbles, words hidden in her pillow.
The cloth drops to the floor. Isaac is moving around her room, picking up his discarded things, getting dressed. She can hear him, and for a long minute, he stops, the room dreadfully silent. Isaac is staring at a note taped on the wall, but she can’t bear to open her eyes and actually see him walking out on her.
***
She doesn’t hear from him or of him for six months. She spends the entire Holiday season holed up in her room, regretting everything, hating herself. She picks herself back up again, slowly; because this is a choice she’s made and regretting it now makes no sense. She watches the marks fade from her body.
Then, while drinking her first coffee of the day in her favourite coffee place, Napoleon sits down at her table, his own cup in his hands. She regards him coolly, though she knows she is unfair to him just because of his best friend.
“Long time no see,” he says.
She nods. There’s something eerie about seeing these historical figures in modern days, just having their breakfast in her vicinity. The plain clothes suit him though, which is not something she thought she’d say about a former emperor.
Just when she’s ready to ask her own questions, Napoleon speaks.
“Are you married?”
“Wh-what?!”
He gestures towards her hand. She takes off her ring, pressing it to Napoleon’s palm. There is a phrase engraved inside it: the great ocean of truth. Part of Isaac’s last words, Isaac’s purpose in life and afterlife both. She carries it with her, as penance for the time she asked him to live pursuing it, without her by his side.
“Does he know?”
That it’s her own promise towards him, that she is to love him, like a woman loves her the one, until her own dying gasp? No, of course not. So far, she has only asked, gave nothing.
“Does it matter now? He hates me for what I’ve done.”
She can still remember his angry touches, his hurt love-making – and she’s grateful to have had it at all. How pathetic does that make her?
“You’ve hurt him,” Napoleon agrees. “But that doesn’t mean he hates you. He’s walked through time, at time’s own pace, for you. He’s seen the changes in the world… and he might understand why you decide to stand here and now. Even if he wishes you would have explained it to him before.”
He returns the ring to her. Her coffee is growing cold.
“Is he… Is he in a lot of pain?”
“Less than he used to?” Napoleon answers, though he sounds quite unsure.
“I love this century!” Dazai says, as they go out for lunch together, at a Japanese restaurant.
They talk nothing of importance, at least until the food arrives, and they know they won’t be interrupted anymore.
“Dazai-san… I want his number.”
“Unfortunately I have Ai-chan’s express orders to not do such a thing,” he sighs, placing his chopsticks down on the table.
He’s kindly patting her head, with his now freed hand.
“But Toshiko-san… are you in a lot of pain?”
He’s a gentleman, so he doesn’t comment on her tears. He still hands her his handkerchief. No amount of gentle dabbing can stop her face from the red blotches popping up.
“Every minute I’m not with him, is just a minute I won’t have back again.”
Dazai sighs, understanding. This poor girl has been surrounded by immortal vampires, and learnt how to recognize her own mortality. She has given her heart to one of them, and she understands that her life is just a drop in the ocean of his being. And yet – smart, wicked, selfish girl, she has had him for the past two hundred years or so either way.
“Well, I could tell you where to find him…?”
She snaps up to her feet. Dazai grabs her arm, gently but firmly guiding her back to her chair.
“Finish your meal with me first?”
“Of course.”
She’s waiting in front of the university gates. In this time, no one bothers her or wonders why she’s here at all, even if back when they met, the sight of a woman on academic grounds was still entirely unnatural. She stole a cigarette from Dazai’s pack earlier, and she’s now smoking as she waits, trying to calm down her nerves.
Then he appears – and it feels almost too easy, to see him after such a long time. He’s talking with someone, walking in fast paces; she’s staring so hard she’s afraid she’ll leave a hole through his body. She throws her unfinished cigarette on the ground, stepping over its lit end. She calls out his name, notices him stop dead in his tracks.
He doesn’t turn at first, passing a hand through his hair, annoyed. He apologizes to his companion. When he eventually looks at her, there’s so much in his expression that she can’t even begin to pull it apart and decipher it.
Isaac stops a distance away from her; enough that they can have a conversation that won’t be overheard by others, enough that he can’t just reach out to her and touch her.
“What do you want?” he asks, trying his best to sound unaffected at the sight of her, seeking him.
“How are you?” she questions back.
She’s holding onto her bag strap with more force than necessary, her nails digging painfully in her palm. She sounds weak and vulnerable and tired, which is why Isaac sighs, comes one step closer.
His fingers find hers, slowly untangling her hold, smoothing out the crescent marks left behind with his thumb. She’s holding her breath, staring at him. Maybe it’s this: the sight of her, as ravaged as he feels the insides of his ribcage, that turns him honest.
“I miss you,” he murmurs, and he takes her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles.
“I’m right here,” she says, and he’s withdrawing, like her skin turns to flame and it hurts him to touch her.
“Y-you don’t understand! I… I don’t want you if you’re not mine…”
His voice dies out towards the end, just above a whisper. His arms fall next to his body, defeated. She reaches out for him, her hand cradling his cheek. She’s never felt the need to comfort him this strongly. The band of her ring is cold against his skin, and yet he can’t push her away, not again.
She searches through the pockets of her pants, and she presses her find in his palm. The metal just as cold there, but her hands are oh so warm. He stares, first at the ring in his hold, then up at her. He hurts with hope.
“Wh-what is the meaning of this?”
The gold glistens in the afternoon sun. He catches the writing, swirls the ring around in-between his fingers so he can catch the entire phrase: all undiscovered before me.
“Spend the rest of my life with me?” she asks, and it’s her turn to sound faint and unsure.
If she were him, she’d say no. She’s been so selfish, and maybe that’s her sin: that she just takes and takes, and has nothing better to give than herself.
What she doesn’t know is that he’d say yes to death for her.
He embraces her, so close and tight that her shoulder blades hurt. In this time, no one cares for their desperate public display of affection. She’s trembling in his arms, and yet she is, finally, warm and safe and loved. His words are mumbled in her hair, as she plays with his hair.
“You’re terrible.”
“Yes,” she hums. “I know.”
“The wait almost killed me.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “I know.”
“You don’t really deserve me saying yes.”
“Yes,” she assents. “I know.”
“Th-then how come I love you anyway?”
“I love you too.”
The one thing that she misses, now that she lays in the grass by Isaac’s side, holding his hand, ring against ring, promise tied against promise, is the night sky. The lights around them, the city burning bright at all hours of the night, dim the lights of the universe.
And yet, she has spent a long time watching the city lights, connecting them together like stars. They never shined as bright as tonight. She wonders, strengthening the hold on his hand, making Isaac look back at her, who they would be without what they’ve been through.
He smiles at her, rolling around on his side so he can drape an arm around her waist, kissing delicately at her jaw.
Ah, she thinks, isn’t that a worthless question to ponder on? When they’re everything she could have wanted, right here and right now?