"Layers and layers deep. I fall in, he falls in..." Valan's voice trails off. "We fall in."

I know you'll miss me
I know you'll miss me
I know you'll miss me blind...

     "Hmm...what is interesting..." What could be more interesting than you in my arms? William is watching his hands move against you from over your shoulder. You sparkle in the water, and like an elusive dream you ripple beneath his touch.

     "When I first met you, that night at the L'Empereur, you were pressing a blonde man against the stairwell wall." Golden eyebrows lift and he tilts his head. "At the time I did not know Ian, but I do ...and I like him... so I am wondering...what you were doing with your tongue down another man's throats and is this something you make a practice of when Ian is not around?"

     William exhales slightly. "I know...we have been more open since returning from America. And I have needed that. And I appreciate how difficult it is for you." He adjusts your towel around your shoulder. "There's a part of me that ... wants to take the Directorate by storm one night. You and I... secret marriage... not so secret anymore."

     A sudden grin flashes at Edward's lips though his eyes remain closed. "Ami...don't worry," Edward says again. It's an exercise in futility for you, his smile says, but for him, it is the exercise that keeps him on the Brujah path.

     As garden parties go, it went rather well. There was a string quartet set up on the paved stone area in front of the chapel, allowing for those who wanted to get in a waltz to do so at their leisure. But, in general, the gathering was more low key.

     It is the look of a man who knows he has been wrong. You've seen the look enough to know it for what it is. But for the first time in... well... this time it isn't about some wrong or other done to you. It is about a Prince (and a duke) knowing that he has acted in a very deplorable way.

     He is fairly certain that the fountain was never meant to be used in that fashion.

     "I am not interested in chandeliers, I am not interested in business. I am interested in you. That is what I asked about and that is what I am interested in."

     She's shifted gears on him. It takes him a long moment to catch up. Plans? What plans? I seem to have forgotten everything but this pen. Brilliant he may be, attentive, however, is something else.

     "Alright," Raymond says, shaking his head. You are a strange duck. He glances behind himself, then moves around the room slightly, to spend a last bit of time at the chateau in relative peace.

     Yes yes. This is all very nice, my dear, sweet Victoria. But it doesn't help me one whit. You see, I need something to do. I can't kill people. Toying with you is now libel to get me into more trouble than I really want, just now-- don't worry, we'll come back to that at some point.

     Lightning strikes a tree just outside the window at the exact same time a freak gust of wind comes in off the river. The sound and the pressure combining to blow the window inwards in a deadly rain of glass and water.

     Little is known about her other than her association with the earlier owner of the castle, her profession as a psychiatrist, that she has only visited the chateaux briefly this fall for a few hours in the span of her ownership, and that she is (unfortunately) American.

     A crystallization of Valan Montague. Part truth, part fiction, part pure myth. But it happens to everyone, doesn't it. Everyone for whom the clock no longer ticks. Outside of that most human of states, time-bound civilization and reality, We become Something Else.

     When my flesh parts to your mouth, you will see them etched there. The glimpses of things that have yet to be, yet to happen. I am staring at my first view of the ocean and seeing the stars as for the first time. And you are there with me, Eduard. One night, we will have drinks with your friends, and our lips will move with an escapade...

     As the last tendrils envelope his face, Edward scoots snow over the ember. "Okay..." he smirks, "...I think...you'll like this..." his brow furrows, look lingering at you. Edward bites his bottom lip and pushes goggles back over his eyes. Follow me.

     "I'm scared, Will," he gets out, despite the aching tear that threatens to rend him into two. What does it mean...to me? Will I become...ah...there you are Liam. What is a young man who serves another...but a whore?

     "Yeah, but..." Edward goes on, "...what if I waited...and something happened to him??" his voice nervous and animated. "What the fuck then? Spend an eternity wishing I'd had done it...and he'd still be alive? They're so fuckin' fragile Will. Anything'll kill them."

     There he pauses for a moment. And you feel a hand return to you, lightly touching your side as the Crusader's cross, the cross of the Duke of Normandy, Prince of England and France, and Eleventh Comte du Poitou is lowered over your head.

     "Moving to London to be...with this Man," said not as the word seems. More encompassing. "It is a grand, great, frightening, dangerous, marvelous, and loving life you stand ready to embark on, Valan Montague," Ian says softly. "I wish you nothing but joy, peace, success, and luck."

     A lift and a touch of his gloved hand against his partner's cheek as he leans in. A kiss that, though it is brief and for public consumption, is also without shame. A kiss, love, and see my smile? "Handsome, without compare, beautiful. I like this..." Distraction is spreading. William touches his hand to Ian's indigo. You wear my colors. As easily as you wear me .

     I am standing in the exact center of the world. Between Life and Death. Between the Mundane and the Extraordinary. It is not easy.

     You miss the look, and it's a pity because it's truly priceless. No one shocks Plantagenet. With nonchalance he smiles and seems to know. Unaffected, even by the most orgiastic visions. But, you've mentioned Dunross... not only by name... rather than the more common epithets of him or even the more common... simply leaving him out altogether... some four or five times.

     How can it be true, Valan ...
     "And so... it is true..." I did not dream it or in some sort of plum brandy haze hear something that was not there.

     Your senses are sharp. You must hear the intake of a breath. Hear the sparkling of a fire drawn in. The smell of a pipe. The thump of a samoyed's tail. "It is a good night for a smoke," comes the even, deep voice of Georg the Swiss. It rumbles in his chest as he inhales at his pipe again. "What better way to spend the unending night," as it was once called, "... than smoking on a mountain ... Come... pull up a dog, Meurelle..."

     "Vicomte," Edward chuckles, "...I...never became Comte," he whispers, voice lowering. A reason why. "My...brother did..." voice is softest, almost as if his lips move without sound.
     "...six hundred years ago."

     Only then does Edward's face come upright to see you. There you go. I said it . "I do love you. And I want you to stay with me, for a long time." For longer than you perhaps can. How do I make this happen without ruining you and what I find so perfect about you?

     "It would do good for her... for her to wait, Edward," Girault murmurs. "Patience... is a virtue. It is the only one I practice..."
     "You... should spend time with your Montague..." he adds in a murmur. Girault smiles to you. Before she interferes. Before you present him to her. This, Girault does not say. "It ... would be... time better spent?"

     "Oh, God!" he calls, an open, aching lament. "What in the fucking hell," English now, "...is he doing here...." Edward's head rolls in disgust, hands coming up to cover his eyes. What is with the last two nights ...

     The skiis slide upon the snow and ice, and the mortal upon the edge of the world. This is what knowing Life and Death is. It is beautiful. To be so close to the sky. Upon a spire-point of earth. This is one of the few acts where a mortal may stand, throw his arms wide and hug God. And to say: Here I am... Here I am, one of your small children...

     "Si, it sounds so. Hmph. You must be a handsome boy for my Eduardo to look at you," almost accusingly, "...well, that is enough, Valan Montague, where is my Eduardo? Get him, please." You can almost hear her fingers snapping...

     Such stories begin this way. No fable should be without its chateau and a winter landscape. And so it begins...