| Aftermath - II |
[Apr. 22nd, 2006|11:56 am] |
Just a job, he said. Sure it is. A way to keep an eye on me, make sure I've got some money - like he didn't give me enough before I left - and, almost incidentally, take care of an unpleasant chore. It shouldn't be too difficult, although I suppose I'll have to cut my time in England short as a consequence. I think I'll go to Australia, afterwards.
Wait, that would be a bad idea - it would be just my luck to run into a certain Brujah and I don't think he'll give me time enough to explain what happened before tearing my head off. The United States are out for the same reason. So many places I have to avoid, although I suppose that my walking around in daylight will do the Masquerade some good, non?
I miss him something terrible. I keep expecting to see him when I go "home", or to hear him when the phone rings. It'll get easier over time, I know it will. I think I can trust him to abide by my request to give me at least a year without his vitae. Then I'll know that I can think clearly. Insofar as that's possible for me - although that has been remarkably easy, so far, which leads me to wonder... |
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| About Rachel - I |
[Apr. 19th, 2006|02:16 pm] |
Rachel won't ever know it, but I never quite understood the fascination she had for me. I most definitely do understand the power I had over her. Exploring permutations of that power more than made up for her dour hypocrisy.
Yes, dour. I knew her for the majority of her life and not once did I see her laugh, or even smile. Rachel DuNoir was too preoccupied with duty and holy obligations to have a sense of humor. Her childhood, her family, her Embrace all conspired to make her an intense, dedicated, well-skilled and entirely humorless fanatic. How she avoided holy suicide, I don't know.
And I don't know why she maintained my interest. Wait, I know the superficial reasons - because everyone has a favorite toy, and security exists in predictable, repeatetive action - but there must have been more to it than that. Or am I just that simple?
As I've said before, Rachel wasn't much of a challenge in and of herself. I pushed her to what I knew was her breaking point and could stop short, every time. The challenge didn't lie in her threshholds, but in mine. I could have Embraced her in 1941, diablerized her in 1964, convinced her to abandon her fiance at the altar in 1996 - all with almost no effort on my part. I could have done all those things but tested my resolution to not do a certain thing, in order to be able to do another thing, years later. I dared myself to make the easiest, the most immediately satisfying choices, and then challenged myself not to. Even small victories are worth savoring.
I'm not a rapist - there are better ways to express hate - but I am a powermonger. I've never pretended otherwise. And to convince a dour little Puritan that there are some pleasures of the flesh that can be enjoyed even by our kind... that was satisfying. So satisfying that it entertained me for decades.
And yet she couldn't smile, not even then.
I've gone off on a tangent. Satisfaction might have brought the cat back, but it seems like such thin soup to me. I think I was waiting for her to fight back - hoping for it in a way. Why, then our relationship would have gone into new territory, found new challenges and choices to be made. But it never happened. I think that mindless respect for perceived hierarchies was bred a little too well into my favorite Caitiff.
Meanwhile, Yvette has not only taken up challenges, but cast them in my teeth. It's interesting and I'll have to think more on it.
Maybe I got addicted to that security of repetition that Rachel offered. When things didn't go well in the rest of my existence, I could always be secure of that I still had the upper hand with that woman. That would make her a crutch, wouldn't it? A prop for my ego. I never thought of it that way, before... Thank god she never realized it.
I think, however, that Yvette has. If I choose to bring her back. I've lost.
New territory, indeed. |
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| Aftermath - I |
[Apr. 18th, 2006|10:23 pm] |
I'm going to have to leave him. I love him, but I have to go, at least for a while. I've got to prove to myself that I can stand on my own, that I can survive without his help - without anyone's. It might kill me and, god, that scares me. But I can't stay. This is my best - my only - chance to learn about myself. I have to take it. I can't risk not doing so and doubting myself forever afterwards.
Forever. It's such an easy word around us. Will we have it? I don't know. But I want it to be my decision, not his. |
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