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Fog curls through the fields, obstructive and cold as always. Legundo leans against his shield, heavy, exhausted, as he watches, scanning the perimeter with a practiced eye. The vampires have been unusually… quiet, as of late. Ever since Apo had that feeling, that sense of loss that had swept over her like an avalanche of grief, it’s been silent.
He should’ve known it wouldn’t last.
It’s quiet still, when he appears. There’s no dramatic reveal, no fanfare. One moment there’s nothing but the waving grass, and the next he’s just there.
Scott.
He stands in the field, a few meters away from the edge of town. Doesn’t do anything. Doesn’t say anything. He just… stands.
Legundo heaves a tired sigh, hefts his shield, and moves forward. There hasn’t been a necessary need to call for the others, not yet, and he knows that they’ll inevitably show up anyway. Scott still hasn’t moved. Legs faintly wonders if he’s even blinked.
“Scott.” He addresses him shortly, not moving past the border of what remained of the palisade. Scott blinks, once, twice, as if not expecting to be acknowledged. He looks at Legs, face twisted in a way that was unusual for the manor lord. In a way that was unusually emotive. “Why are you here?”
Scott regards him, still eerily silent. And Legundo… doesn’t know how to react to it, so used to the elder vampire’s extravagance and flair, not this. Legundo speaks again.
“Someone’s bound to notice—”
“I don’t know why I’m here.” Scott interrupts him, voice soft and flaking, like snow. The air feels equally as frigid as it is fractured, akin to deceivingly thin ice, enticing people to step on its crackling surface and subsequently fall in, to the churning depths below. Scott averts his eyes, fixating on the charred remains of the burned wall. As if reminiscent. Legundo processes his words, taking a small step forward, pausing when Scott doesn’t even look at him. “I just thought… maybe…” he realizes that Scott, of all people, was at a loss for words. Legs takes another step, and Scott finally looks at him. “Doctor.” Legundo freezes upon being addressed. “Have you ever lost someone before you had the chance to learn how to love them?”
The question bites deeply, toneless and quiet, yet Legundo senses that there’s something more to it. A toiling rage and fragility, something he never thought Scott capable of. Was there some sort of motive here, or was he genuinely trying to understand something? Legundo thinks. Thinks of those lost to war, to illness and neglect. Thinks of Owen.
“Yes. Why do you ask?” He pries for answers, for understanding. For a foothold in the mountainous, daunting, and once untouchable being that was Scott Goldsmith.
“If you could, would you do anything for them, if they were still here?”
Legundo pauses, taken aback by the question. He ponders it, allowing the elder the benefit of the doubt. Anything entailed, well, anything. “Depends on what anything means, to you.”
Scott chuckles, light and airy, reminiscent of lavender in the wind.
“As much as I grit my teeth to admit, humans and vampires are quite similar beings.” Scott speaks slowly and steadily, yet his fingers, not claws, fingers twitch at his sides. Legundo doesn’t dare interrupt, doesn’t dare break this shaky treaty between them. “We are all driven by emotion, at the end of the day. We hurt, we betray, we love, and we… regret.”
“And what do you regret?” Legundo can’t help the question, slipping past his guard before he can stop it, breaking his silence. Scott doesn’t blink, but he does tilt his head, thinking.
“One of mine was killed, you know this, yes?” Scott doesn’t answer the question. It was to be expected. Legundo just nods and doesn’t press.
“...Yes, Owen informed us of A… of his demise.” Scott’s face finally changes slightly, a slight tick of his brow, giving the doctor the briefest glimpse of the elder’s opinion on Avid’s death. A glimpse of rage, of grief, of loneliness. He doesn’t know what to do with the sight.
“Then you know that it was not orchestrated by one of you.” Scott says, low and dangerous. “Disease grows from within, like a festering wound. Betrayal runs deeply, akin to a sword through one’s chest, as I imagine you know.” Vitriol laces Scott’s voice, words deliberate and sharp and targeted. Something aches within Legundo.
“The wound only festers if you allow it to.” He argues, but it’s weak. Legundo has already tossed and turned on the ‘what if’s. What if they hadn’t attacked Avid, at the lake? What if he wasn’t driven by the familiar ache of anger and betrayal, that he didn’t drive the sword through a pleading boy? Would Avid have survived his encounter with Pyro and Owen? Would they have spared him? Legundo doesn’t know. He never will get the chance to, faced with the one grieving his death.
“Owen doesn’t want to better himself.” Scott muses. “He perpetuates a cycle of violence for a death that no person here had any part of, that had no knowledge of it. Sometimes, it is not possible to heal the wound, when it doesn’t wish to heal itself. Sometimes, as you say, you must lose the leg to save the body.”
“Did you love him?” Another question he cannot stop. A rueful smile dances across Scott’s lips.
“No.” Scott hums. There’s a thick moment of silence before Scott breaks it, voice even softer. “But I would have.”
Not a could, not a possibly, a cold, solid would. That there had been something blooming, something that could’ve been a grand garden, had it not been snipped by careless shears. Legundo lowers his shield to his side.
“I’m sorry.” He settles on. It’s not enough, he knows it isn’t, not for the boy who cared too hard and feared too much, killed by the ones he had once trusted. Buried by the ones he had begun to believe in. Scott relaxes slowly, uncurling his fists, resting his hands at his side. Voices ring loud from the town. Legs faintly hears his own name. Scott bows, smiling without a hint of malice, of disdain, of rage. It’s small, weak, and so, so tired, and yet there’s a curl of firm resolve.
“Thank you, doctor, for this conversation.” Scott straightens, tone lilting with that faux glee once more. “I understand what I must do, now.”
The noble disappears in white wings, a mockery of angelicism, gliding off under the moonlight. Legundo stands and watches until the shape is indistinguishable from the stars and footsteps thump over to him.
“Doc! You alright, did he attack you? The hell was he doing here?!” Martyn starts sputtering immediately, tailed by Apo and a slower-paced Abolish. “Why didn’t you holler for us?”
“I didn’t need to,” Legundo glances down at the place Scott had stood. “We just… talked.”
“What did he say?” Apo presses, Legundo doesn’t answer right away, trying to fully understand the undertone of Scott’s words. “Legs?”
“Just… asked me a few questions. Ended the conversation with, ‘I know what to do, now.’ He’s angry–no, that’s not right… he’s anguished, furious, but not with us. I—” He chews on the words for a moment, looking over, past Apo and Martyn, looking at Abolish. “He’s mourning.”
“Mourning and Scott Goldsmith don’t exactly belong in the same sentence.” Martyn interjects with a grumble. Abolish just raises a shoulder in a partial, dismissive shrug.
“Avid?” Abolish asks it, but Legundo knows that Abolish has already figured it out. He just nods, confirming it. The other inclines his head, urging Legundo to speak, to state what conclusion he’d come to.
“..I think he’s going to kill Owen.”