capeandcowllogs | Race for the morning

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Race for the morning

WHO: Aaron and Hans
WHERE: The Hangar/apartment
WHEN: Early May 20th, after they're attacked.
WARNINGS: Discussions of an attack that was unpleasant
SUMMARY: Hans never realized Aaron was a vampire until tonight when Major's fanboys attacked the Hangar they both live in.
FORMAT: Paragraph

At least the smell of blood didn't overwhelm his senses anymore, now that the hangar had been cleaned up. It had not been an easy job, but a couple officers had offered to help them out as a way to get away from the city for a little while.

Now that it was just the two of them, Aaron returned to their common space, taking off his jacket and finally removing his holsters. His glasses had been replaced before anyone had arrived. The clips in his guns were almost spent, but it still felt heavy as he set them on top of his jacket. Beneath, his shirt was stained in spots where the battle had briefly left its mark. He was pulling the rounds out of the gun chambers and removing the clips to reload them. The only thought on his mind at the moment, however, was the veiled meaning behind Hans' statement from earlier.

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He sat down on the arm of a chair, sliding another magazine into the rifle. Just in case more people were coming. He had changed out of his clothes, which had been rather bloodstained, and now wore a robe over some old sleepwear.

"You are not even bleeding now," he said, casually. "A rather salient detail, one might say. I have seen men absorb bullets before and do incredible things, but they did tend to perish immediately thereafter."

Aaron glanced over at Hans, something between a frown and sadness reading on his face, even with the glasses on. He was not a fan of the direction that this conversation might take, but it was best addressed sooner, rather than later. He returned to his clips, working to reload them.

"Most men would, if they were human."

He nodded, putting aside the rifle to reload the pistol from a box of cartridges kept in a drawer. Finally he put the pistol aside, taking his time thinking things through.

"So you are not human, well. You might have mentioned it sooner. What, then, are you, precisely?"

He set his own gun aside, though if Hans wished to shoot Aaron, he'd already seen a demonstration in the lack of effectiveness of lead in stopping him. He at least turned to address Hans with his answer, but for once, he dropped the practice of talking subtly to hide his fangs.

"I was human once, a long time ago. I've been a vampire for many years now, but it's why the Major has had such a interest in me."

He watches him for a long moment, and his only reaction is a slight surge of adrenalin. He wonders at that - a predator facing a better adapted predator, perhaps. But, to his surprise, even this produces no fear.

He isn't happy with this turn of events, not really. A vampire. That comes with...baggage, as it were. He has read the tales, seen some of the films even. The silence drags out, into a longer moment. Finally, he speaks.

"I cannot say I am comfortable with this. I wish you would have told me before I invited you into what, for lack of a better word, is my home. But, that being said...who someone is is different from the what. And we have stood together in combat. I can...forget about the rest."

Aaron let Hans take it in at his own rate, his tuned senses picking up on that subtle surge, but he did not betray his knowledge that he had noticed any reaction at all. Still, he felt himself frustrated with Hans' reaction. The soldier felt threatened, and while he couldn't blame him, it still bothered him.

"If you're referring to the myth that we need an invitation to enter a home, in my case, it has nothing based in fact." He turned back to his guns, taking the slide off of one and began to disassemble it. "I understand it's a shock. You're not the first human I've talked with about this, but I understand why most are uncomfortable with what I am."

"Uncomfortable with what you are? It is not that. I am also a killer - it is more that you felt this information was not worth disclosing to me."

He shifted position, sitting down in the chair with a sigh. "You do realize I have been stocking...weapons, to deal with Major when the time came. I could have inadvertently caused you harm."

"I would have preferred to have known, that is all. That and it would have been nice to have known whether or not being bitten in the night was a possibility."

Aaron set down his slide and barrel with a sigh.

"I do not feed on human blood, so that is not a concern you need to entertain. I'm also fairly certain that whatever you have stocked to deal with him will not inadvertently harm me. I carry weapons that are effective against my own people at all times." He turned back to Hans, folding his arms before him. "As for my failure to inform you, I can at least hope you'll understand that I've survived by not disclosing this to many people. Many of the Import officers are aware of the situation, but only because of my history with the Major."

"I can. I would personally have thought that disclosure would cause most opponents to think twice, but how this city functions is still beyond me."

He casually cleaned off his knife, which had seen heavy work that night. "You have found substitutes, I would assume, and that takes will. Effort. Those are good things. But I was not even aware you had much of a history with the Major, other than being targeted owing to being a police officer."

He reached into a top pocket, pulling out a battered package of cigarettes.

"At any rate, I am a fellow officer, am I not?"

"Yes." His voice was quiet as Aaron stood, his glasses concealing the fact that he had to glance down and away in a moment of shame. The silence that followed his affirmation however, was telling.

"Ah."

He nodded, lighting his cigarette and taking a long drag.

"But I am a German, yes? Or, more correctly, a German of a certain era."

Aaron found himself at a loss for any words he could use to answer that. He knew Hans' stance on the war and what had happened, but for all the years he'd had to learn to live with his personal experience, he still found it hard to trust him on a certain level. All because he was a German soldier, even if Hans himself had never done any wrong against Aaron, or anyone he'd known.

He sighed, slowly dabbing off his ash in a convenient ashtray.

"The silence is eloquent," he said, quietly. "A stigma that will follow me all of my days, regardless of what I have done, or what I will do. I was never a party member, and in fact I was...well, old friends in high places kept me alive, and nothing more."

He smiled, ruefully. "But none of that really matters, does it? Not in the final analysis."

"I know very well the difference between a German, and a Nazi." Aaron found himself almost snapping back, but he managed to reign himself in, if only barely. Lack of sleep, recent injury, and stress were doing little in the way of helping him handle the situation in his usually calm demeanor. He turned, moving a couple paces and took a breath to calm himself. Did he really know the difference? His actions now were making him wonder if 60 years had only made things worse.

"But you're right, that it follows you. And in the end, we'll be judged by what we really were." He didn't sound defeated, but tired. It was not just Hans, but Grant, and anyone else who had ever heard of a vampire, that judged him just like he was doing now.

Edited 2011-05-22 07:17 (UTC)

"Do you? Do you indeed? And yet, here we are, discussing that difference."

He did not look at all impressed by that argument.

"Not what we were," he adds, "but what we are. The past is merely a part of that, albeit one you cannot shed."

And there he had voiced the exact question Aaron was asking himself. This time it was obvious he looked away, as he sat on the arm of a chair, trying to figure out whether he really did or not.

"Perhaps...not as well as I thought." It was almost an apology, it certainly sounded like one.

"The young were dying again," he replied, looking through Aaron. Looking directly into the past. "Russia consumed so many. Ours, theirs. But I saved a few, and it was...duty."

"I hated the regime, I had retreated from society, from Germany, when they came to power. An insult to everything we had stood for. But I felt they were fools, bringing our nation to ruin."

His face hardened. "Then, one day, I had to bail out. Over a place called Dachau." He unconsciously snapped the cigarette in two. "Then I saw what they really were. We did not think...how could Germany do that?"

He put down the remnants of the cigarette, pulling out another in its place.

"And thus, I am here. They stripped us of our honour, tarnished us all...we all are monsters by association, are we not? Thus I fight this, this...aberration of the Major."

Finally, he looked at Aaron again.

"So why do you fight?"

When he'd begun to speak, of the war, and then Dachau, Aaron raised his head to watch Hans, hinging on his words, and learning how he had wronged him.

"His kind, they took everything from me. Above all, my wife and daughter." He took a moment, composing his thoughts. "And when I came here, nearly a year ago, he gave me a taste of what my people had suffered under the care of Dr. Mengele. He used me, what I'd become to survive and take my revenge on the Nazis, and perverted my blood to build his first army of vampires."

"They took the last of my friends, although it was American steel that finally ended it. They took my country, piece by piece, and then...then the Americans and the British - in trying to end the evil - set it on fire from the sky."

"That is why I served until the end, before I was brought here. The madness of war...that I must preserve them for a few days in the process of saving innocent lives."

He sighed, spreading his hands. "You see, we are all tainted by their evil, that is the truth of it. It is insidious in its cruelty."

He sighed, quietly. "And I am sorry. For your loss."

"Your motivations for protecting your people were good. The ones who hid among them were the monsters." He sighed in return.

"Thank you." His voice was quiet. "I have had time to live with the loss but more recent events, both here and at home, have made that wound raw again, while making new ones also."

"And yet you have been only accommodating to me, knowing at least, that I was Polish and had also been through the war."

"Why should I think differently of you? For being Polish?" He shakes his head.

"A proud and ancient land, but people are people anywhere. We all bleed the same. We all die just the same. Poland is distinguished only by an unfortunate set of geography."

He sighed, squeezing the bridge of his nose between two fingers.

"The wounds never heal. I remember the face of every comrade I have lost. Every man I have killed, even when I did not see it. I remember how it happened. We do not forget, we merely push aside. Survive."

"I am Jewish, and Vampire, is it still a matter of geography?" He shook his head in a manner that waved off any actual desire for an answer from Hans.

"We've both killed, and lost. That at least, we have in common."

"I served with Jews. They were my friends. They shot down men who would have killed me. Do you really believe I would think of them, of you, as different because of something so inconsequential as religion?"

He lit the cigarette, taking a long drag. Desire or not, that much needed to be said.

"We have something else in common: this life chose us, not we it. We did not choose to be killers, but had it thrust upon us. I suspect you did not volunteer to become a vampire, after all."

It was a relief to hear from Hans his convictions, that he was more than accepting of such difference, but at his last statement, there was again that telling silence from Aaron. Whether it had been a choice to become a vampire, or put upon him, he was unwilling to deny or admit to either. He could argue both ways, but usually he settled that it had been a choice, one he was determine to accept and live with the best that he could.

He folded his hands in front of his face, the end of the cigarette glowing in front of his eyes.

"Was there a choice?" He asked, simply.

"Yes." Aaron's shoulders slumped just a little. "I could have died with my daughter, but instead, I chose revenge."

"Death or survival as a vampire? No, that is not a choice. What we do to survive, that close to death, is never a choice. It is instinct, at best."

He moved his hands, puffing at the cigarette thoughtfully.

"You did what you had to in order to survive, yes. Yes, that is precisely what you did."

"Make of it what you will. At the time, my only reason to live was for the death of the soldiers that drove me to that point." After, of course, he'd found other reasons, but until Cross had retrieved him afterward, there'd been nothing.

"I suspect," he said, choosing his words slowly and carefully, "that survival drives us more than revenge. But if it was a part of one, then which element held the balance in the decision hardly matters."

There was logic in what he said, and Aaron wasn't about to argue the point any further, though he knew he certainly could. The truth was he knew it wouldn't be worth it, and Hans' logic would win out.

"Sound reasoning."

"So, we are killers. But at least we are not monsters. Tainted, perhaps, by association...but that is all."

He nods, firmly.

"And tonight proves I've nothing to worry about, so I will consider the entire matter of your vampirism closed. Unless, of course, there are any dietary requirements I can help with."

He knew he wasn't talking about, say, his blood being used, but he was not precisely aiming for irony.

Aaron smiles weakly at that affirmation, it's what he had only hoped to hear.

"My dietary requirements will not be something you need to concern yourself with." He glances back at the door to his room. "My people developed a synthetic substitute, and I have an arrangement with the local Import clinic to maintain a supply which meets my needs."

He nodded.

"Good that it is steady, then. Feel free to stock some here. There is a second working refridgerator, in the back. Thankfully, it is wheel-mounted, so moving it shall not be troublesome."

"Fortunately, it does not need to be refrigerated. A characteristic we intentionally included and the quantities are small. No additional arrangements here should be necessary."

"Well, at least you will make no demands upon my cuisine," he said, in a deadpan. It was difficult to tell if he was joking or not.

"But, it is good to have...cleared the air. Even if you still look at me, somewhat, as being the enemy."

"That, is something I wish to change." He glanced down. "I should hope my decision to take up your offer to live here shows my intention, however much that I seem to have failed in it."

"Intent has to count for something," he said, with a friendly nod.

"And in the morning I shall install better locks, and get that partition up, so you can have an actual space."

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Race for the morning

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