"that other thing"

Remember when i said there was another thing that needed esplainin'? (check "Threat") This is it. (Written by Ari) ~Sylph

Urm... I guess we'll call it "Bloody Sunday"

 

 

Ari's Perspective

 

             

              "Sleeping out here again?" I asked Alex as he propped up one of those couch pillows and sat down on the couch.

              "Yeah. How'd you guess?" he said, smiling.

              I realized that Alex's sleeping bag had been on that couch for just as long as Tao had been upstairs by himself.

"What's wrong with Tao?"

              "Leave him alone. He'll get over it." Alex said quickly.

              "But what's wrong? Is he sick?"

              "No I mean yes. Just leave him alone. I'm staying away from him, Ari."

              "But he's been alone for four days and you won't tell me what's going on!" I said, frustrated.

              Alex turned around and held my head firmly in his hands. "Ari, look at me. Please stay out of that room, okay? I don't want you to... huh." he sighed, noticing my stubborn expression, hugging me and pecking my forehead.

              "You don't even know, do you?"

              "Oh, I know, alright. Just stay out of that room. He is not in a good condition. He's done this before. It'll go away. Meanwhile, we all have to stay downstairs. I just don't want you to get hurt, okay?"

              "Fine." I lied through clenched teeth. As soon as I was out of his sight, I quickly went upstairs to his room. For all we know, he could've committed suicide without us knowing it.

              The door was open just enough for me to slide in without touching it.

              Tao's face was pale -- well, even paler than usual. His hands were balled up into stark-white fists, clenched around the metal frame of the balcony.

              "Tao?" I said, concerned.  His back grew more rigid, almost shaking from the tension.

              "Ari. You should've listened to Alex." he said, half in anger, the other half in pain. How could he have heard that? He whirled around and grabbed hold of my arms. Fear nauseated me when I saw that his eyes were blood red. "You should have stayed out." he growled -- literally.

              I tried to break free from his death grip on my arms. It was to no avail.

              "Tao, stop!" I said. I thought vampires couldn't consume elven blood... He held firmly to the back of my neck with one hand and to the small of my back with the other. I went frantic when I felt his fangs peirce deeply into my neck. It felt as if dry ice had been liquidated and injected into my veins. Chills ran through my body in strong waves. My heart stopped, my breath caught in my throat.You have no idea how wierd it feels to have your blood sucked out from you. I could almost feel my veins draining and deflating. After what seemed like hours, in the corner of my eye I saw Tao's eyes fading back to silver.

              Alex's almost completely dormant vampiric senses must have kicked in from the scent of blood, because he slammed open the door and stopped midstep at the sight.

              "Tao! Stop!" Alex roared, running the rest of the distance across the room and pulling against Tao's grip. Alex's strength proved too much for Tao's.

              Tao let go of me and he and Alex struggled for a moment.

              Tao regained his awareness. "What were you thinking?!" Alex shouted at Tao, anger and fear in his voice. "You nearly drained her!"

              Tao was panting hard. He looked down. My blood was all over his hands, down his arms and dripping down his chin.

He looked at me and then back at his hands.

              "I'm sorry." he said, still panting. He looked at himself in a mirror with a hateful glare, then ran out of the room toward the bathrooms to get the blood washed off.

              I sat down slowly against the wall. The blood I had recently lost was beginning to take it's toll on me.

              "Come on." Alex whispered, helping me up gently and leading me into my dormroom, after making sure none of my roomies were inside.

              "Sit down." he coaxed, "We've got to take care of that wound or else you won't have any blood left by morning."

He took a wet rag and dabbed it against my neck. He touched a place that stung like a mother and I let out a hissing sound.

              "I'm sorry. Looks like it's already gotten infected. I'm going to have to put some alcohol on it." he said quietly. "But this is partly your fault, too."

              "I know. Please don't rub it in. I've learned my lesson."

              The piece of cloth he just doused with alcohol stung anyway, but he decided to ring it out on me. "Ouch." I said, kind of upset he did that.

              "I asked you to stay out. I practically begged! You could have shown that you have at least the slightest bit of trust in me and listened! You're lucky you're Elven, or you'd either be dead or whatever Tao is right now! I could smell your blood from downstairs, Ari."

              "I'm sorry." I said quietly.

              "Yeah, now you're sorry." he said, agitated.

              Kaydra opened the door unexpectedly and saw the gauzed-up neck of mine, the full-of-blood rag, and Alex's bloodstained hands.

              Kaydra sighed. "She went upstairs, eh?"

              "Yup." Alex said. "I'm finished. You can go on with whatever you were going to do." He kissed my cheek and stood to walk out of the room. "I've gotta clean up the mess in our room before Eddie comes in."

              Kaydra looked down, with a funny look on her face.

              "What?" I asked suspiciously.

              "He's not very happy with you, Ari."

              "Yeah, I don't have to read minds to know that, Kaydra."

              "But you don't know what he's thinking!" Kaydra laughed. "That's ironic. He's not happy with you because he loves you."

              "How is that... Nevermind, I don't want to know." I said, rubbing my forehead.

              Auria strode in from her shower and looked timidly at us.

              "Did Ari get hurt? Why is there a ginormous bandaid on her neck?"

              "Yes, Auria, Ari got hurt." Kaydra said, as if she were talking to a little child who was too naive to understand the urgency I had just been in. "But Alex helped her to feel better."

              I was starting to feel sick to my stomach from the loss of blood.

              Kaydra read my mind again and asked Auria to get me a drink downstairs.

              She obeyed once she got her pjs on and shut the door.

              "Thanks, Kadie." I said, still not my best.

              "Yeah. Next time, when someone asks you to stay out of that room, listen."

              "Yeah. I get it."

              "You must be tasty." Kaydra smirked. "I heard from Grimloch that you sure smelled like it."

              "And now everyone thinks I'm tomorrow's breakfast." I grumbled.

              "Nah. You've got yourself a gaurd dog or two that will keep that from happening."

              "Not helping."

              "I'm just messing with ya." Kaydra laughed. "You should probably sit down, Ari."

              "I got Gingerale!!" Auria cheered gleefully while opening the door. She looked at my face, then said, "And I also brought Root Beer." quickly.

Ari'sgotgauzearoundherneckforawhileAlexkindasteameddown

              Do you know exactly how much your neck does for you? I didn't. Until I hurt it. I can't even bring myself up to a sitting position without hurting myself. This will take a while to get used to. Emmit got a good look, complemented Alex on his healing skills, agreed that it was stupid not to listen to him, (I'm gettting tired of being told how stupid I am, guys...) and found a strange book that had instructions on how to "make your blood cells multiply back to a healthy level", as Emmit put it. In other words, it will give me my blood back. Don't ask me how. I think I'm going to be sick just thinking about it.

              It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize Tao was avoiding me for about the rest of the week. Grimloch said he wasn't angry at me, but more at himself. That doesn't make it any better, though.

              I'm slightly paler than before, but I assure you I'm not a vampire. I was bending over my lunch tray one day and I accidentally ran into Tao. "I'm sorry." he mumbled, then attempted to go avoid me again. I grabbed ahold of his arm. He whirled around. His expression was unreadable. Fortunately, Tao told me what he was thinking.

              "Ari, please don't." he attempted to break out of my grip. He didn't succeed-- Frankly, I'm surprized he couldn't, considering I couldn't get him to stay when he didn't want to before this happened. 

              "Tao. It's alright. Stop avoiding me already. Alex is actually mad at me, and even he isn't avoiding me like you are."

              "Well, yeah, but-"

              "-Don't you tell me it's because of this and that and all that crap, Tao. He may be my boyfriend, but he has every right to end that right now. I'm afraid he might.." I finished off, fading into a whisper. I didn't intend to tell him that. Way to go, big mouth.

              He looked at me and tried to pry away again, but gave up.

              "I don't want 'positive Tao' to be a pessimist. Crap happens. You have to keep going or else you'll never get out of it."

              I received a funny look for my metaphor.

              "Ari, even if you could get Alex that angry, he wouldn't be able to bring himself to do that. No matter how hard he tried. I don't think he's ever loved anyone else more than he does you." Tao said, looking breifly into my eyes.

              "Tao... please..."

              "I'm alright. I don't want you to think I was avoiding you. I just thought you wouldn't want to talk to me." he said, giving me a brotherly hug.

              After a moment, he let go saying "I'll see you later, Ari." He threw his untouched lunch in the garbage and walked out of the room.

              What Tao had said kept repeating in my mind as I was mulling it over. I hoped what he had said was true.

              I scanned through the dining hall and found our little group. While I strode to the table, Alex stood up and met me halfway.

"There you are. Emmit found a way to fix the problem, but...it's... not gonna be easy." he said quietly, clasping my hand. He led me to my seat and took his place across the table from me.

              "We've found a way to fix your little...predicament." Emmit said as I sat down.

              "So I've heard. And... the bad news?" I said, somewhat unnerved.

              "It's not gonna be pretty." he said ubruptly.

              "Kinda figured." I muttered, running my hand through my hair. 

              "It turns out we can't just get your blood to multiply like usual here. So, we have to turn to the human approach. You need a donor."

              My mouth involuntarily dropped open. "A... Donor? I thought you said we could do this without having to drain someone else."

              "You'd have to have fangs and enjoy sucking blood, dearie." Hanako muttered, apparently just realizing what we were talking about.

              "Just great." I said, dropping my head in my hands.

              "That isn't all." Kaoru interjected. "We'd have to find someone who's a pureblooded elf. That's our best chance. That's a problem because I believe that your family were the last of the pureblooded elves in Aleron. This is a relatively dangerous prodecure because we'd have to open your veins in order to do so, and we haven't found a way to do that without having you lose more blood."

              I looked down at my clenched fists. They were shaking furiously. I quickly shoved them under the table. Alex looked timidly at me and tried to smile.

              "But we aren't completely sure. We'll have to do more research to be completely correct, Ari." Emmit said, shaking my shoulder.

              "Hey." Hanako said suddenly. "Alex's a blue-blooded elf, isn't he?"

              "Yeah... At least, we think so..." Emmit said confusedly. "I thought that you were born of a vampiric family, Alex..." he said.

              Alex nodded. "But that doesn't mean I can't be. I mean, look at me. I'm a pretty mixed up child to be vampiric at all."

              "Yes..." Kaoru said, but her eyes showed disbelief. "But I think that we'd find a better chance if we could... use her dragon as a donor." she said excitedly. "You already share half of your bloodline with Andromed. Yes, I beleive that could work."

              "How did we start talking about my dragon being a donor?" I said.

              "We aren't sure that'd work either, Kaoru." Emmit said quickly. "That's all we have for you. But we'll find what's left. If there's anything else out there, we'll find it."

              "Why don't we give her time to think about it?" Kaoru said quietly. Emmit stood up and left, with Kaoru following him.

              Hanako muttered something about her homework, which she never worries about, and left too.

              I still had my head in my hands, my elbows propped against the granite tables. I felt Alex's hand against my shoulder. "Are you alright?" he asked quietly.

              "Yeah." I said, oblivion's clouds clearing up a little.

              "It's alright to cry, Ari." he whispered, rubbing my arm.

              "Nah. I've already made a fool of myself enough. Besides, I don't feel like it anyways." I answered quietly.

              "Why don't we go for a walk?" he asked, offering his hand to help me up.

              I stood up, my legs shaking a bit, and somehow managed to walk without my legs giving out. He put his arm around my shoulders, helping me to walk easier. We came to a deserted hallway, where the janitors didn't even bother to clean the windows.

              "So what part scares you the most about all of it?" he asked, watching me lean against the wall slowly.

              "The 'you'll need a donor' part. This was my fault. I don't want someone practically draining themselves to help me."

              "You shouldn't feel that way if the donor is volunteering." he said pointedly. "They want to help you in spite of the circumstances of the accident."

              I looked at him. He stared me down with a concerned expression. I squirmed from under his gaze.

              "I'm sorry, Alex. I trust you. I really do. But that doesn't stop me when my rebellious side is in overdrive like it is now. Being defiant was how I learned to live my entire life. I haven't figured out how to turn it off yet."

              "I've already decided to forget about it. Yeah, I was mad. But later I figured that it'd take less time to forgive you without your apology than to actually hear an apology from you." Before my defiant side could ask what that was supposed to mean, he gathered me in a hug. "I want to see if I can be your donor." he said in a dead-serious tone. My heart julted forward.

              "Thank you." I said, my voice tighter than I had expected.

              "I love you Ari. I want you to get better. I want to help you."

              I started stumbling over myself, trying to thank him, failing to find an adequate way to do so.

              Alex lifted my chin with his forefinger, tilted his head and pressed his lips against mine for a long moment. One of his arms were propped against the wall I was leaning on. The other slid behind me and wrapped around the lower part of my back. I kissed him back. When we broke apart, all I managed to say was "That was a nice way to tell me to shut up."

              He smirked mischeviously. "I should do it more often then, huh?"

              Hey, wait... You could take that two ways there...

              "Hey!" I said, doing my best attempt at swatting at him, but failed. Epically.

              "I was just kidding!" he shouted in between laughter and dodging my lame attempt at a swing.

 

somebodywaslameenoughtocallMenanMoolala

              If I were to tell you I was Irish you'd never believe me. I have zero luck in my life. As nice as Alex was to see if he could be a donor, as Kaoru suspected, the blood wasn't compatible. Now, for my last resort: Andromed.

              Praise to the Man.