Aspasia - August - Greece (Part III)
She runs fingers through her hair. "And there was the curse."
Jack takes a moment to inhale the fragrance of the gardens before saying "What curse, petite?"
"The curse and blessing of being Kshatriyas." She looks out, gaze fixed on nothing specific. "I estimate I have some 10 years, perhaps a little more before I will be forced to rest again."
Aspasia adds, in a cryptic murmur, "The thickness of the blood. More to the point, tasting the vitae of another."
"I don't I've ever heard about that. Or if I have, I don't remember it, which is much the same thing, n'est-ce pas?"
"Simply put, the madness of frenzy comes upon the bloodline that Urvi and I share if we drink of other kindred. Not every time, but most times." She pauses in her stroll and turns to look at Jack. "And we cannot be easily brought back to our senses when that happens."
He looks at her for a moment, and then nods. "Hence the very rabid persecution of diablerists."
“At the very least, no Kshatriyas has ever been discovered to be one. It's as close a surety as our world seems to offer. And there is the mixed blessing of independence, knowing that no other has sway over our mind if the bloodline is active, but there is cost as well."
She reaches up to pluck leaves from an overhanging branch. "As is fitting. To everything there is a price."
"Oui. C'est vrai." He looks around again for a moment, before looking back at her. "How do you perceive me?" he blurts out suddenly.
Aspasia stills.
As a man. As a puzzle. A regret? A partner. A danger. A promise. A threat. A tool of the Moirae?
All of these things.
A slight look of discomfort crosses her face. "I see you as Apollo's priest. Iereas. Forever denied his presence."
"I do not think I could bear being outcast from my patrons. But the strength of your endurance, your faith - is more impressive for that burden." She adds softly. "I think only a Gangrel could have that certainty, that surety of soul. It makes you a leader despite yourself."
Jack shakes his head. "Sorry, not what I meant. I meant more how do you see me in relation to you? How do you see... our relationship?" He starts to put his hands in his pockets and use his hat to shield his eyes.
The woman ahs.
*Truth Amazon. You know this conversation must take place.*
"You would not be Jack, if you were not direct." And she shakes her head just a touch, but it seems to be an internal gesture.
He smirks. "I guess not, petite."
"Can you accept that I do not know?" She traces the fingers of her left hand back and forth over her lower lip, as is Aspasia's usual habit when thinking. "And that is part why I asked you to travel with me, Jack?" The pace of her words is tentative, matching the woman's body language.
"Oui, I can accept that. But others... well, they seem to think that there's something that either we can't see or won't see. And it confuses me, to be honest. But I ain't trying to push you."
Others?
This matter lies most properly between Jack and I, now that Xeneia’s forgiveness and consent has been given.
*And Raven.*
"If there wasn't a natural inclination, we would not have been…" Aspasia stops.
*More than casual bed partners?*
She drops her hand to her side. "I remember snippets, Jack."
The woman looks around and steps beside the nearest tree, leaning her back against it, almost as if to prevent from being ambushed. "I remember feeding on a pair of drunks with you. I remember times when I thought to steal your hat. Times when I wanted to destroy it."
"I remember your touch. And other things." She murmurs. "And all of that was near a century ago.”
Jack sighs and drops his head, pinching the bridge of his nose briefly with his fingers before looking at Aspasia again. "I'm just... I'm just confused, petite. Not just about us. About everything. The past few months I've been finding a /lot/ more holes in my memory. People I don't even know are coming to me and asking for help, and I don't know if I knew them before and just forgot, or if they know you or X or Bat and just think that it's okay to ask a complete stranger for help, or what. It's getting easier and easier to just fade out from society and go back on my own, but then again..."
He looks out at the garden before finishing. "I ain't the saint everyone thinks I am.”
No saint. Priest.
And faith is always tested.
“I ain't some magical cure for what ails folk. And every time someone asks for help and I give it to them, I feel like a fraud, like I need to take care of my problems first before I can tell people how to solve theirs."
He looks back at her. "And I ain't /never/ felt like that before. Always it's been just charging right in and to hell with what anyone else thought of me. If'n I died, only a couple of folk would be sad, but I died doing my duty to God, n'est-ce pas?”
And a few would be more than sad.
“Always it was only what God thought of me and no one else. I was a dead sinner on borrowed time who weren't never destined for great things, just doing his small part on this earth before he was finally sent to Hell to collect on all his sins.
"But it ain't like that now. I can't do the same smart-mouthed merde I did before, because I ain't the only one that could get hurt. Someone might take issue with my family, or you, or your family, or my covenant, or whatever. Folks I ain't even MET might try to kill folk I care about, just because of something I said or did. Like I said, I ain't worried about myself, but I don't want folk who might still have a place in God's plan to die just because of something I did.
Something in the Amazon's face expresses silently that she more than understands this conflict and concern.
"Sure, I know in my head that if'n they die, God obviously was done with them anyhow, and I ain't big enough to pretend to even know His plans. But it ain't easy carryin' the weight of everyone on my shoulders. A year ago, six months ago, I was worried about you being in love with me or not in love with me, and that was important. It still is, but it ain't as important as other things."
The Gods will have their way.
Jack stands up, and carefully puts his hands on each side of her face, looking into her eyes.
I think the fog will never take the memory of his gaze from me. Just as the feel of Dallas’ chest pressed to my back, the spiraling patterns Raven drew on my skin always dance in my mind.
"Next to God, you are someone I would do anything for. If you needed something, I would walk the earth to get it for you, no questions asked." He pauses, and smirks. "Well, okay, questions asked, but I would still do it." She smiles briefly, before his face becomes more serious again. "I just need to know that you're there for me, petite. I need to know who will stand by me, no matter what."
*Predators will turn on each other. Monsters will. He knows that.*
But I am more than that. So is he.
Aspasia lays her hands over his, pressing his fingers against her cheeks. "No matter what else may lie between us Jack, I would come if you called on me. Only an immediate threat to one of my children would take precedence."
Her gaze is unflinching as the woman continues, "I will stand by you, no matter what."
The Moirae knows that I have taken the lessons to heart, Raven.
Never again as with Dallas.
Jack closes his eyes, nods and smiles in relief. "Merci, petite," he says quietly.
She murmurs. "You thought I would answer any other way?"
He smirks, and kisses her forehead. "Non. But I still needed to hear it."
Aspasia caresses the back of his hands with her fingertips.
This too I remember. The feel of his skin under my touch.
Then drops her arms to her side with a nod. "Men are foolish sometimes." There is an almost indulgent smile on her face.
He drops his hands from her face with an amused snort. "Women ain't exactly got a lock on wisdom, petite."
“Truly spoken, Jack." She exhales.
And that still leaves things ill at ease.
"So do we talk now of things past, or leave them sleeping for a while?"
"If'n you want to talk about them, I'd like to resolve it. If'n you still need to think about it, we can continue to walk and smell the flowers. Or grapes. Or whatever."
Aspasia nods, thoughtfully. She gestures towards the pathway into the gardens. "You should see the temple. It is a ruin, but beautiful, none the less."
He nods.
"We can talk and should, I think. We owe each other that. If not for ourselves, for those tied to both of us."
"Oui." He looks at the ground as he walks, waiting for her to speak.
Aspasia rubs the side of her neck, looking at the nighttime scenery, the sky, anything really, before she opens the conversation.
"While I have taken my share of bed partners. Other than a handful, they have all been in observation of ritual - which has it's import, but is not the whole of my being. You are among the few with whom I have had a stronger connection in kindred society - always putting aside my bond to my brood."
He coughs slightly. "I... um... ain't been with hardly any kindred sexually, except X."
The woman nods. "There is that, which is...pleasureable to me,"
*Confess, it is more that, with him. When you draw him to your bed.*
Aspasia runs a hand through her hair, "But, you are special in that of all those living and awake, to my recollection, only you have seen me at the closest apex to my beast. And you do not seem to despise me even knowing that. Witnessing that."
"Of course not. But then there was... something. A fight, I think."
Aspasia nods. "A fight.”
Enough to stir the killing rage in my blood. That much I am sure of.
“The resonance still churns in my soul from time to time. But then, I will remember nights like this," She gestures broadly to the landscape and the sky. "A memory of watching the stars dance and fall from the sky in a tremendous display. Surely Artemis riding her chariot to earth."
"I wonder if it's significant that neither of us remembers the fight clearly, but we both remember better nights."
His words seem to hang in the night air as a level of tension that was present earlier seems to edge up. For a moment the woman looks conflicted or startled, an admission in itself that Jake is right and she does not remember. Perhaps she had not planned to reveal that fact, but now it's undeniable. Aspasia takes a few steps before answering.
"I think it must be. If Eoin was correct, I left you and no few years later I willingly laid down to rest. I did not wake for some 40 years. More than enough time for the fog to take what it would.” She makes a quiet confession. “I left no journal about the latter half of our travels together, before I slept."
He nods, looking down at the ground. "I remember that you loved me," he mutters, almost as if he's embarrassed to say it out loud.
*Truth or Lie, Amazon? What to give him now?*
The woman stops and turns to face Jack. "I remember that as well. I do not think I would be here to today, if not for the power of that bond between us then." She pauses. "And it is confusing for me now. There are moments when the echoes, the memories, overwhelm the present, and the very nearness of you makes everything feel more acute."
Jack turns to look at her, watching her face carefully. "Oui," he whispers, looking closely at her eyes. "It's been tearing me up thinking that maybe I imagined it all."
"Oh Jack, no. You did not imagine it." Aspasia's words come slowly. "But I do not know how that affects us now. Or how we should let it affect us."
Because there are others to consider as well. Line and Clan both.
Her grey-green eyes hint at an internal conflict. "The world is more complicated now, than it was back then."
"How so?"
"Up until this century, I had only dealt with two of the Ravenscarred in any meaningful way. Eion, my battle partner, and Dallas." She pauses, "He will have been dead a full year in another half-moon, at my hands." Aspasia exhales and looks away. "Those few I hold close as my line and who I would invite to my bed? With his death, there are two. Yourself and Raven."
"And you think Raven will have problems with things?"
*Confess. You hope he would. You hope he would choose you over his patron gods.*
"With the fact of your existence? No. With our past? No. But the Moirae had problems with what lies between Raven and I. The Fates spun threads and weaved and cut. They are jealous of their favored ones."
And so there was pain and death for those around us.
Aspasia runs fingers through her hair, "I fear for you. Fear they use you and I, and....." Her voice fades off with a somewhat eloquent shurg.
And I do not want to hurt him. I do not want to hurt you.
Jack looks at her hard. "Do you think that refusing to acknowledge it will save me somehow, petite? If'n folks in your line are already assuming something's there, ain't likely that pretending it don't exist will change a damn thing, n'est-ce pas?"
"Not what has been, Jack. But what might be." She answers quietly.
*So, there is a possibility, Amazon? You take the steps in your mind already, welcoming him back into your nights, then your bed. Your heart?
And what of Raven?*
"I will not deny the tie is there, the ease of familiar companionship. The fact that I can relax in your presence," A slight huff, "..until the ackwardness intrudes."
Until I remember we parted in anger. Until I remember that there is another kindred to keep in mind here.
*How humane.*
Aspasia looks at Jack, eye to eye. "And that comes with the knowledge we fought and bitterly. Over something I cannot remember for all that I strive to." She swallows, "I feel, no, fear - at one point it was to a killing anger, and if you had not helped me to find lost shards of my soul, I would have attacked you, had I been as close to the beast as the night you found me in that man's cabin."
Jack looks at her for a moment. Then he slowly walks behind her and slides his arms around her, holding her close to him. "But I trust you, petite," he whispers in her ear. "Completely."
There is a subtle shudder of her muscles, before Aspasia becomes quite still.
Jack takes a moment to inhale the fragrance of the gardens before saying "What curse, petite?"
"The curse and blessing of being Kshatriyas." She looks out, gaze fixed on nothing specific. "I estimate I have some 10 years, perhaps a little more before I will be forced to rest again."
Aspasia adds, in a cryptic murmur, "The thickness of the blood. More to the point, tasting the vitae of another."
"I don't I've ever heard about that. Or if I have, I don't remember it, which is much the same thing, n'est-ce pas?"
"Simply put, the madness of frenzy comes upon the bloodline that Urvi and I share if we drink of other kindred. Not every time, but most times." She pauses in her stroll and turns to look at Jack. "And we cannot be easily brought back to our senses when that happens."
He looks at her for a moment, and then nods. "Hence the very rabid persecution of diablerists."
“At the very least, no Kshatriyas has ever been discovered to be one. It's as close a surety as our world seems to offer. And there is the mixed blessing of independence, knowing that no other has sway over our mind if the bloodline is active, but there is cost as well."
She reaches up to pluck leaves from an overhanging branch. "As is fitting. To everything there is a price."
"Oui. C'est vrai." He looks around again for a moment, before looking back at her. "How do you perceive me?" he blurts out suddenly.
Aspasia stills.
As a man. As a puzzle. A regret? A partner. A danger. A promise. A threat. A tool of the Moirae?
All of these things.
A slight look of discomfort crosses her face. "I see you as Apollo's priest. Iereas. Forever denied his presence."
"I do not think I could bear being outcast from my patrons. But the strength of your endurance, your faith - is more impressive for that burden." She adds softly. "I think only a Gangrel could have that certainty, that surety of soul. It makes you a leader despite yourself."
Jack shakes his head. "Sorry, not what I meant. I meant more how do you see me in relation to you? How do you see... our relationship?" He starts to put his hands in his pockets and use his hat to shield his eyes.
The woman ahs.
*Truth Amazon. You know this conversation must take place.*
"You would not be Jack, if you were not direct." And she shakes her head just a touch, but it seems to be an internal gesture.
He smirks. "I guess not, petite."
"Can you accept that I do not know?" She traces the fingers of her left hand back and forth over her lower lip, as is Aspasia's usual habit when thinking. "And that is part why I asked you to travel with me, Jack?" The pace of her words is tentative, matching the woman's body language.
"Oui, I can accept that. But others... well, they seem to think that there's something that either we can't see or won't see. And it confuses me, to be honest. But I ain't trying to push you."
Others?
This matter lies most properly between Jack and I, now that Xeneia’s forgiveness and consent has been given.
*And Raven.*
"If there wasn't a natural inclination, we would not have been…" Aspasia stops.
*More than casual bed partners?*
She drops her hand to her side. "I remember snippets, Jack."
The woman looks around and steps beside the nearest tree, leaning her back against it, almost as if to prevent from being ambushed. "I remember feeding on a pair of drunks with you. I remember times when I thought to steal your hat. Times when I wanted to destroy it."
"I remember your touch. And other things." She murmurs. "And all of that was near a century ago.”
Jack sighs and drops his head, pinching the bridge of his nose briefly with his fingers before looking at Aspasia again. "I'm just... I'm just confused, petite. Not just about us. About everything. The past few months I've been finding a /lot/ more holes in my memory. People I don't even know are coming to me and asking for help, and I don't know if I knew them before and just forgot, or if they know you or X or Bat and just think that it's okay to ask a complete stranger for help, or what. It's getting easier and easier to just fade out from society and go back on my own, but then again..."
He looks out at the garden before finishing. "I ain't the saint everyone thinks I am.”
No saint. Priest.
And faith is always tested.
“I ain't some magical cure for what ails folk. And every time someone asks for help and I give it to them, I feel like a fraud, like I need to take care of my problems first before I can tell people how to solve theirs."
He looks back at her. "And I ain't /never/ felt like that before. Always it's been just charging right in and to hell with what anyone else thought of me. If'n I died, only a couple of folk would be sad, but I died doing my duty to God, n'est-ce pas?”
And a few would be more than sad.
“Always it was only what God thought of me and no one else. I was a dead sinner on borrowed time who weren't never destined for great things, just doing his small part on this earth before he was finally sent to Hell to collect on all his sins.
"But it ain't like that now. I can't do the same smart-mouthed merde I did before, because I ain't the only one that could get hurt. Someone might take issue with my family, or you, or your family, or my covenant, or whatever. Folks I ain't even MET might try to kill folk I care about, just because of something I said or did. Like I said, I ain't worried about myself, but I don't want folk who might still have a place in God's plan to die just because of something I did.
Something in the Amazon's face expresses silently that she more than understands this conflict and concern.
"Sure, I know in my head that if'n they die, God obviously was done with them anyhow, and I ain't big enough to pretend to even know His plans. But it ain't easy carryin' the weight of everyone on my shoulders. A year ago, six months ago, I was worried about you being in love with me or not in love with me, and that was important. It still is, but it ain't as important as other things."
The Gods will have their way.
Jack stands up, and carefully puts his hands on each side of her face, looking into her eyes.
I think the fog will never take the memory of his gaze from me. Just as the feel of Dallas’ chest pressed to my back, the spiraling patterns Raven drew on my skin always dance in my mind.
"Next to God, you are someone I would do anything for. If you needed something, I would walk the earth to get it for you, no questions asked." He pauses, and smirks. "Well, okay, questions asked, but I would still do it." She smiles briefly, before his face becomes more serious again. "I just need to know that you're there for me, petite. I need to know who will stand by me, no matter what."
*Predators will turn on each other. Monsters will. He knows that.*
But I am more than that. So is he.
Aspasia lays her hands over his, pressing his fingers against her cheeks. "No matter what else may lie between us Jack, I would come if you called on me. Only an immediate threat to one of my children would take precedence."
Her gaze is unflinching as the woman continues, "I will stand by you, no matter what."
The Moirae knows that I have taken the lessons to heart, Raven.
Never again as with Dallas.
Jack closes his eyes, nods and smiles in relief. "Merci, petite," he says quietly.
She murmurs. "You thought I would answer any other way?"
He smirks, and kisses her forehead. "Non. But I still needed to hear it."
Aspasia caresses the back of his hands with her fingertips.
This too I remember. The feel of his skin under my touch.
Then drops her arms to her side with a nod. "Men are foolish sometimes." There is an almost indulgent smile on her face.
He drops his hands from her face with an amused snort. "Women ain't exactly got a lock on wisdom, petite."
“Truly spoken, Jack." She exhales.
And that still leaves things ill at ease.
"So do we talk now of things past, or leave them sleeping for a while?"
"If'n you want to talk about them, I'd like to resolve it. If'n you still need to think about it, we can continue to walk and smell the flowers. Or grapes. Or whatever."
Aspasia nods, thoughtfully. She gestures towards the pathway into the gardens. "You should see the temple. It is a ruin, but beautiful, none the less."
He nods.
"We can talk and should, I think. We owe each other that. If not for ourselves, for those tied to both of us."
"Oui." He looks at the ground as he walks, waiting for her to speak.
Aspasia rubs the side of her neck, looking at the nighttime scenery, the sky, anything really, before she opens the conversation.
"While I have taken my share of bed partners. Other than a handful, they have all been in observation of ritual - which has it's import, but is not the whole of my being. You are among the few with whom I have had a stronger connection in kindred society - always putting aside my bond to my brood."
He coughs slightly. "I... um... ain't been with hardly any kindred sexually, except X."
The woman nods. "There is that, which is...pleasureable to me,"
*Confess, it is more that, with him. When you draw him to your bed.*
Aspasia runs a hand through her hair, "But, you are special in that of all those living and awake, to my recollection, only you have seen me at the closest apex to my beast. And you do not seem to despise me even knowing that. Witnessing that."
"Of course not. But then there was... something. A fight, I think."
Aspasia nods. "A fight.”
Enough to stir the killing rage in my blood. That much I am sure of.
“The resonance still churns in my soul from time to time. But then, I will remember nights like this," She gestures broadly to the landscape and the sky. "A memory of watching the stars dance and fall from the sky in a tremendous display. Surely Artemis riding her chariot to earth."
"I wonder if it's significant that neither of us remembers the fight clearly, but we both remember better nights."
His words seem to hang in the night air as a level of tension that was present earlier seems to edge up. For a moment the woman looks conflicted or startled, an admission in itself that Jake is right and she does not remember. Perhaps she had not planned to reveal that fact, but now it's undeniable. Aspasia takes a few steps before answering.
"I think it must be. If Eoin was correct, I left you and no few years later I willingly laid down to rest. I did not wake for some 40 years. More than enough time for the fog to take what it would.” She makes a quiet confession. “I left no journal about the latter half of our travels together, before I slept."
He nods, looking down at the ground. "I remember that you loved me," he mutters, almost as if he's embarrassed to say it out loud.
*Truth or Lie, Amazon? What to give him now?*
The woman stops and turns to face Jack. "I remember that as well. I do not think I would be here to today, if not for the power of that bond between us then." She pauses. "And it is confusing for me now. There are moments when the echoes, the memories, overwhelm the present, and the very nearness of you makes everything feel more acute."
Jack turns to look at her, watching her face carefully. "Oui," he whispers, looking closely at her eyes. "It's been tearing me up thinking that maybe I imagined it all."
"Oh Jack, no. You did not imagine it." Aspasia's words come slowly. "But I do not know how that affects us now. Or how we should let it affect us."
Because there are others to consider as well. Line and Clan both.
Her grey-green eyes hint at an internal conflict. "The world is more complicated now, than it was back then."
"How so?"
"Up until this century, I had only dealt with two of the Ravenscarred in any meaningful way. Eion, my battle partner, and Dallas." She pauses, "He will have been dead a full year in another half-moon, at my hands." Aspasia exhales and looks away. "Those few I hold close as my line and who I would invite to my bed? With his death, there are two. Yourself and Raven."
"And you think Raven will have problems with things?"
*Confess. You hope he would. You hope he would choose you over his patron gods.*
"With the fact of your existence? No. With our past? No. But the Moirae had problems with what lies between Raven and I. The Fates spun threads and weaved and cut. They are jealous of their favored ones."
And so there was pain and death for those around us.
Aspasia runs fingers through her hair, "I fear for you. Fear they use you and I, and....." Her voice fades off with a somewhat eloquent shurg.
And I do not want to hurt him. I do not want to hurt you.
Jack looks at her hard. "Do you think that refusing to acknowledge it will save me somehow, petite? If'n folks in your line are already assuming something's there, ain't likely that pretending it don't exist will change a damn thing, n'est-ce pas?"
"Not what has been, Jack. But what might be." She answers quietly.
*So, there is a possibility, Amazon? You take the steps in your mind already, welcoming him back into your nights, then your bed. Your heart?
And what of Raven?*
"I will not deny the tie is there, the ease of familiar companionship. The fact that I can relax in your presence," A slight huff, "..until the ackwardness intrudes."
Until I remember we parted in anger. Until I remember that there is another kindred to keep in mind here.
*How humane.*
Aspasia looks at Jack, eye to eye. "And that comes with the knowledge we fought and bitterly. Over something I cannot remember for all that I strive to." She swallows, "I feel, no, fear - at one point it was to a killing anger, and if you had not helped me to find lost shards of my soul, I would have attacked you, had I been as close to the beast as the night you found me in that man's cabin."
Jack looks at her for a moment. Then he slowly walks behind her and slides his arms around her, holding her close to him. "But I trust you, petite," he whispers in her ear. "Completely."
There is a subtle shudder of her muscles, before Aspasia becomes quite still.