Time, Death & Scar Tissue...

27. Picture It

Kathryn stretched comfortably against him. The worry of such a short time before had dissolved completely She still didn't know the origin of some of her feelings, but that was something she found she could live with. She kissed his collarbone softly.

“Why is everyone afraid of you?” She asked, surprised to hear herself say it out loud. It was something she had wondered about, but it seemed like one of those things that polite people didn't discuss. His hand stopped moving in her hair for a split second and she knew that she had surprised him as well.

“Are they?” His fingers traced her ear lightly. She had said it now and there was no taking it back; she might as well get the answer. She looked up at him with her direct gaze.

“You know they are. That guy with Corey the first night we met saw you and left. You move through crowds like you're parting the Red Sea, which I’ll admit is very useful sometimes. Everyone seems anxious around you though, even if they don't know you. I know for awhile there you had Corey thinking that you were some sort of sinister force.” His finger traced her lips softly, silencing her and gauging his own answer.

“Not everyone sees me the way you do, Kathryn. In fact I think those who know me in other capacities would say that you have a most unique perspective.” She could tell that he had given his answer and wasn't likely to add to it, but that didn't mean she was satisfied with it.

“That sounds like something my grandmother would say when she's trying to be mysterious.” She laughed softly and his eyebrow rose.

“A rather odd comparison at this particular moment.” He pinched one of her nipples and Kathryn shivered pleasantly and pressed closer for a moment.

“Maybe it does sound a little strange.” She smiled and squirmed against him. “She thinks that I somehow inherited the family intuition and that if she talks in riddles I'll have to use it to figure out what she's saying.”

“This is your father's mother?” His hand rested possessively on her bottom, but Kathryn had become accustomed to that particular gesture. She relaxed against him.

“No, my mother's mother. My Gramma Paige and I aren't close.” She looked up at him very seriously. “I'm a disgrace to the family name because I refuse to get married and I insist on writing pornographic stories.”

“I wasn't aware that you wrote pornography.” He laughed softly.

“Neither was I, imagine how surprised I was to find out.” She laughed softly and pulled the sweater over her head. It fit him but on her it was long enough to preserve her modesty and then some. Kathryn kissed him softly and got up, he let her but didn't let go of her wrist.

“I need something to drink, and I never did show you those pictures I promised. I've been talking about these people so much you should at least have some idea who I mean. Can I bring you something?”

“Not just now.” He released her and she could feel his eyes on her as she walked out of the room. She tried not to let his scrutiny make her shiver, she turned her mind to wondering why he always grasped her wrist instead of her hand. It made her wonder if he was used to forcing others to comply. She brushed the thought aside, she couldn't imagine anyone resisting him long enough to require him to use physical force, his presence should be enough.

Kathryn was glad that Anna wasn't in the kitchen when she poured the juice. Although the fact that she slept in Lucien's bed made it pretty obvious that they were more than just casual acquaintances, but she didn't really feel the need to flaunt the fact either. She pulled a thick envelope of pictures out of her bag and walked back in to find him again. She was only slightly surprised to see him still undressed and stretched out comfortably, his feet resting on the oversized ottoman.

“Don't you ever get cold?” She blushed a little and settled against him again, letting him pull the sweater over her head.

“In front of a fire?” He replaced the sweater with the throw from the back of the sofa. She hadn't noticed it next to the chair. He must have gotten it while she was gone. “Besides, someone left with half of my clothing.”

“Well, you said it yourself, cold floors.” Kathryn nodded and tried to look serious. He chuckled softly.

“You're very shy for an author of pornography.” He stroked her hip softly under the throw.

“I know, but that's part of my charm.” She laughed softly and kissed his lower lip, he deepened the kiss and Kathryn sighed contentedly, allowing herself to get lost in it. Finally, she remembered the pictures in her hand. “I didn't realize we took so many this year.” She shuffled through the stack quickly. “Oh, we didn't. The pictures of my trip to Jamaica are in here too.”

“When did you go to Jamaica?” He moved a few stray tendrils of hair from her face.

“I had just turned twenty-one, so close to three years ago now. I just keep forgetting about the pictures. I'll show you those too, but Thanksgiving first. I won't bother with all the aunts and uncles and cousins, there are too many of them.” She found a group shot of photogenically posed people and pointed out her father, Mira, her stepbrothers and paternal grandmother. The next photo showed the outside of the house in the background with the football game going on the foreground. There was one of Kathryn surrounded by a sea of Cornish game hens with Mrs. MacNamara. Finally, she found the last one that she wanted to show from this set.

“This is my mother's mother, Minerva Bettancourt. The lady in the painting is my mother, Octavia. And the other one is me.” He took the photo from her, studying the three women.

“You all look very much alike, don't you.” He said quietly.

“Not all of us, though we do tend to have very strong genes sometimes.” She sipped the juice as he studied the photo in his hand. “Usually it crops up once a generation. My great-grandmother said it had something to do with destiny, I think she said that so I would stop asking so many questions. So what about your family?” She rested against him, looking up into his eyes.

“I have no family left.” He stroked her spine softly and she noticed the sadness around his eyes as he said it. Kathryn felt like there was more to the story, but if he wasn't going to volunteer it, she wasn't going to press the issue.

“I'm sorry.” She said with simple sincerity.

“Family is more than who you're born to Kathryn, it's who you bring into your confidence, who you share your existence with.” His lips found her softly and she settled comfortably into the kiss. “Now, tell me about Jamaica. I have a hard time picturing you wanting to go there.”

“Well, I didn't really. The second book had just come out and I was all set to start on the third but Grandmother thought that I was working too hard. So, for my birthday she said she would send my cousins Amanda, and Sarah and I anywhere we wanted to go as long as we agreed on the place. They wanted Jamaica and I was outvoted.” She laughed softly.

“Where did you want to go?” His smile was soft.

“Europe, of course.” Kathryn was a bit surprised he would even ask. “I wanted to see all the places I talk about in my books, or at least some of them.”

“You've never been to Europe?” He looked somewhat shocked. “The way you describe locations I was certain that you had seen them.”

“No, I look at books, old maps, new maps, at home I have transparent map overlays of major cities in different eras. When I want to get a feel for layout I put the old over the current, or the closer to current as the case may be. The rest is imagination. I did almost go to France when I was sixteen though, Grandmother got the idea that I should spend a semester there, but my father absolutely refused.” She laughed a little at the memory.

“You must have been disappointed.” His fingers stroked through her hair lightly.

“Not really, I don't speak French. I don't know how Grandmother thought I would manage or what gave her the idea in the first place. She didn't speak to Daddy for months after that though; I think she was more disappointed than I was.”

“So for your trip you wanted to go to Paris?” Kathryn felt like she was melting against him.

“I wouldn't have minded. My great-grandmother was the most recent family genealogist; she said was able to trace our roots back there to the thirteenth century. Frankly I don’t know that anyone ever saw any documents or if any even existed in that time so I’m not sure that’s entirely reliable. I wanted to go to Rome though. Amanda and Sarah said they would absolutely not be dragged from one pile of old stones to another while I took notes, so I ended up sunburned in Jamaica.” She held up the first picture and began to describe the trip.

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LaCroix listened to Kathryn's deep, regular breathing as she slept next to him. He would have been perfectly content to hold her there by the fire for the rest of the night, but eventually she got up and ate and then worked a bit. She had reached something playful in him that hadn't been released in a very long time. The way she behaved after though he could tell that his light mood hadn't changed her concept of her place with him. He dearly hoped that nothing would change that. He had never shied away from power struggles and he almost always eventually won, but he had no desire to make her one of the casualties of his personal wars.

Her brush with time in France had seemed like an idle comment to him when she shared it, but it had played on his mind until he did the math and realized that she would have been there during a period when he had spent a great deal of time there. It made him wonder if he would have met her, and what he would have done if he had. Perhaps nothing, she might not have caught his attention in the same way. Perhaps he would have felt the same pull of familiarity he felt now and she would already be his. It was impossible to tell, but it was a tantalizing coincidence.

The photos had been revealing. Of course he had never seen her in the sunlight and the photos of her in the tropical sun had been a curiosity. He was not prepared for how much she clearly hated it. While her cousins frolicked in swimsuits, she wore large hats and light clothing that covered her from head to toe. She hid in the deepest pool of shade she could find or remained inside while the cousins played in the surf. In the night shots it seemed as though he was looking at a different person. She was confident, smiling and while she maintained her modesty she exposed more skin than she had during the day. He no longer felt that tiny nibble of guilt for taking her out of the light.

The photos of her family told an interesting story too, even the ones that flashed by quickly. She was always away from the group. At first he wondered why she was wearing a gray jumper that looked more suited to a nun than a beautiful girl, the more he saw her in the pictures though he could see that it was purely practical. She helped the cook serve dinner, she minded the small children and in some of the candid shots it seemed obvious that some relative or other was ordering her to do something.

One of the few times she was in a posed group shot the stepbrother who had injured her so badly had his thumb digging into her bruised shoulder. Her smile was almost flawless though and LaCroix wondered how one so young could have developed such a calm exterior. He had known immortals who took centuries to acquire such skill. The bruises were taking on the greenish cast of healing injuries, but he knew they still pained her sometimes. She never said anything about it, but the way she quickly shifted against him when a touch or a hug caused pain spoke volumes.

The picture of her with her Grandmother was the most vivid of the lot though. The resemblance was striking, not only in physical features but in the attitude with which they were carried. In the rest of the photos her eyes were down or she wasn't facing the camera directly. In that one she had been looking directly at the photographer and the pose seemed to transform her. The tilt of the chin, the confident smile, the shape of the nose and the way all three faces held that slightly superior look. He would have recognized the combination anywhere as purely Patrician. He had noticed these things about her of course, but seeing it multiplied threefold had amplified the effect.

On the other hand, her father was completely different. He had the features of someone of the lower classes, possibly even a slave. He had managed to scrape or trick his way into society, but the hallmarks were obvious. The hunger around the eyes that surpassed any hunger LaCroix had ever felt for food, sex or blood, the fine suit chosen for its ability to impress others, and the way he stood with the exaggerated upright posture of someone who had spent a number of years bowing to another. Time could not erase certain inescapable facts about human nature, nor could centuries and intervening generations truly cover the essence of one's beginnings. No matter his expressed pedigree or his education, Thomas Paige had married well above himself when he married Octavia. Mira, whatever her pedigree might be, looked to be more on his own level.

He looked down at Kathryn's sleeping profile. Her pale skin shone softly to his heightened senses, her fine features obvious against the deep green of the sheets. He searched those features for any hint of her father and found none. He wouldn't have felt differently about her if he had, but it was a curious thing.

Her question about why people fear him had been a curious thing as well. It proved that she noticed more than she let on, and she hadn’t entirely accepted his answer, but she hadn’t pushed the point either. He was becoming convinced that Kathryn was more intuitive than even she realized. She began to tremble in her sleep and he tightened his arm around her.

Kathryn whimpered sharply, and then cried out. She began to gasp harshly and he realized she was fighting with her dream again. He turned the light up so that she wasn't disoriented when she woke. She called out to him and he spoke to her softly, reassuring her that he was there and she was safe as he woke her. It still surprised him how easily he slipped into his mother tongue with her. She held him tightly and he wiped her tears away gently.

“I'm sorry.” She whispered. No matter how many times he reassured her that she had nothing to apologize for, she still told him she was sorry. He dismissed it.

“It's alright. Do you remember anything else?” His voice was soft, carefully hiding the urgency of the question. He asked the same thing each time she woke, hungry for new details, telling her that if she could remember more it may help dispel the fear.

“An old woman telling me it wouldn't be much longer. Then someone pushed her out of the room.” She trembled against him and he pulled the blanket over her shoulders.

“You're safe now.” He whispered softly next to her ear. He had noticed that the dream changed her. For a short time afterward she seemed to be younger than her already tender age, and she hid against him in a way that was unusual for her. He allowed her to simply take her comfort as she needed to. He wanted to get to the meaning of the dream, but he could tell that pushing her in these fragile moments was not the way to go about it. Her fear affected him too deeply.

Slowly Kathryn relaxed, her body stretched out against his again and her arms loosened a bit. She kissed him softly and the gesture surprised him slightly.

“Thank you.” She said.

“For what?” He stroked her back.

“Being there.” She rested her head against his shoulder, her eyes closed. He wasn't sure if it was the position or the words or something more ephemeral that tugged at his memory.

“You're welcome, my precious Kathryn.” He kissed the top of her head softly, even though the reasoning behind her statement made very little sense to him. It was his house and his bed; he wasn't sure where else she would have expected him to be. He looked down at her and decided that it didn't matter. She wasn't sleeping yet, but he could sense that she wasn't afraid either.

“Why weren't you sleeping?” She asked. Her voice as soft as before, but the quality of it had changed slightly. He couldn't have described how, but it was something that he sensed.

“When?” His hand stroked the back of her neck softly, massaging her tight muscles gently.

“Before you woke me.” Her fingers stroked his chest lightly.

“How would you know I wasn't sleeping?” He tilted her chin up, searching her eyes for the answer.

“You feel different against me when you sleep. Even if I'm asleep I know it feels different. Besides, you woke me sooner.” Her eyes were as matter of fact as ever.

“You amaze me Kathryn.” He kissed her lips lightly and smiled at her soft sigh against his mouth. “I have a restless mind sometimes. A side effect of age.”

She reached over and turned the light down, but not off. He had noticed that she had become used to the dark, but after the dream complete darkness frightened her.

“Anything I can do to help you relax?” She asked as she snuggled against him again. He knew the question wasn't merely what she thought of as the polite thing to say, if he expressed a desire she would have done her best to fulfill it. His arms tightened around her.

“No, my Kathryn. Get some sleep.”

She nodded and he knew she would be drifting off again in minutes. He held her close, his fingers laced with hers as he slipped into his own deep sleep.