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Leiren perched upon the chair, her eyes looking at the bookshelf with the letter on it. She'd written it ages ago, but she couldn't get herself to send it. Months had gone by. Months of nothing. But she couldn't send that letter. It was like staring down a barrel of a gun knowing that the other person could fire if you gave them the ammo, and **** she didn't want that. it was too raw. To real. To much to deal with.

Damn it all to hell. Why did it have to be like this? Why was she even considering sending that piece of mail? Where would she send it too, even? It was only address with the words 'Wolfgang West' in the neatest penmanship she had. She'd spent hours practicing writing it over and over to get it perfect before she wrote it on the front. Truly, she had no life anymore lost in her obsessions. Everyone she loved was gone. Completely. And that made her feel hollow. But Wolf could at least get the letter. He could at least read it and maybe understand. Maybe. That was a lot of nothing but faith to send a letter on.

What she wanted was reassurance that he'd read it. That he wouldn't just throw it away like the trash she felt like to him.

Leir pulled herself up to her feet, fingers tracing the front of the envelope over his name. Even just the sight of his name hurt a thousand times worse then she thought it could. She'd tried to be heartless when they met that last time, to hurt him, but it hurt her just as much. Leir was a two edged sword, unable to hurt those she loved without hurting herself worse, and this one stung all around. Her chest tightened and she felt the pricks of tears at the edges of her eyes as she picked up the letter.

She swallowed thick feeling blood rise to her throat like bile. She couldn't really do this, send this, it was too much, but she would because there was nothing else she could do but get rid of it, and she'd no more throw it in the trash then she would want Wolf too. Even if it meant giving it to him. Leir left it where only he would find it, Paragon. Even if he didn't see it - ever - she'd have given it to him the only way she knew how, and that to her was acceptable. She pushed back her fear, swallowing it down, as she made her way there.

----

The letter sat in a crisp white envelope that felt like satin, the curve of each letter handcrafted to be beautiful in the script of his name, the back sealed with wax and the symbol of I'laned. Leir had already left, but her marvelously sweet sent was easily upon the air, as if it was attached somehow permanently.

----

Wolfgang West

The things I have said to you are cruel as are the things you have said to me. We are beyond such things as beings, but still I aimed only to hurt you as you hurt me. I am sorry for my outburst, I am sorry I wanted to throw you head into a wall, I am sorry for instead throwing your ring. I had hoped that without them we would no longer be pulled to each other, but I still feel you as if a part of me is simply missing from the place it belongs. I don't understand these magics, but it doesn't matter. I want you in my life, even if it is as nothing but your pet, nothing but that which you destroy, because not having you is already destroying me. If that is not acceptable, then I will respect your wishes, but I ask you find some way to remove this blessing from us both so it can no longer be to me as a curse. If there is any way or kindness towards me in your body I hope you will agree to release me. Even death does not stop this empty. I need you, or I need your help. So I beseech thee to find a way. For I still love you like the moon loves the tide, miss you like the sun chases the moon through the sky, and yet it is like being without the moon at all, because it is gone and the sun has scorched the earth in all its misery so that nothing may ever grow. I am begging you, Wolf, find a way to heal this pain.

Your Eternal Bond,
Leiren Eir I'laned

It was weeks before Wolfgang got the letter, stark against the dark oak desk. His cobalt stare burning a hole through it; that script so familiar and yet… Burly hands moved to grasp the ivory rectangle closed with wax and marked with the I’laned crest.
___His form sank down into the leather bound chair, the piece of furniture rasping as he let his body find its human weight and leaned back to put his combat clad feet up on the desk, the tread of his boots scuffed and worn. “Leiren,” his breath gave life to the name that formed on his lips; he could still smell her on the unopened envelope.
___Desire turned in his gut like the long white ribbons of smoke that curled up and away from the end of the cigarette pinched between his lips. It had been too long since he had seen her, held the woman in his arms and pressed his lips to her cheek. The echo of her discarded band spinning to a stop on the floor of the Necropolis still rang in his mind, taunting him.

___Fire and Ice. The pair shared more passion than common-sense; Leiren with her childlike fantasies and Wolfgang fixated on his ideologies and trying to juggle two lives. They were never meant to work and perhaps that was the beauty of what they had.

___The cigarette was snuffed out and cast aside, the letter brought forth and touched to the light smattering of stubble above his lips. His eyes fell closed again as he reminisced about the girl in the white dress. She was rose petals, burning candles, butterflies and chaste kisses.
___A smile turned the right side of his mouth up and struggled with the left where his cheek was still healing after a stray bullet had delivered a very close shave, cutting through the flesh with such ease that it had taken him all of a minute to realise he had been struck. Fire and Ice.

___Swiftly the wax was pulled back from the smooth casing of the envelope and the letter was slowly teased away from the wrapper and unfolded. A single piece of paper with a message of no more than three hundred words lay before him.
___Wolfgang’s gaze zigzagged across the page to read the words, his lips moving quickly, wordlessly as Leiren’s voice sung in his head. ‘I want you in my life… I need you… For I still love you…’
___The letter was folded again and pressed to the fabric of man’s shirt over his chest where his dormant heart slept. He kicked away from the desk and the wheels on the bottom of the chair took him across the room to where he kept his writing equipment. Once collected his feet took him back to the edge of the desk, chair in tow and he sat down to begin.
Leiren

I've been out of town, returned for a business meeting today at nine this morning. You will probably be fast asleep and my plane leaves this afternoon before you'll even realise I was home. I know the pull you speak of, it’s the same thing that makes it so easy to come back here and all the more important I stay away.
___Darling you're not my pet, nor shall you ever be. I want to make this work but fear I cannot give you the attention you deserve, not while I am living so far away. Dream with me? We used to meet up in our dreams. I shall leave the door open and we can talk there just as we once did. I miss you. I am thinking of you.

I love you.

Wolf
His scrawl wasn't as tidy as Leiren’s and the message not nearly as beautiful, but it said everything he wanted to tell her for now.
___Before Wolfgang went to the meeting he hand delivered the letter to the Necropolis; not sure if the woman still worked there, but a girl behind the bar promise him she was still in contact with Leiren and would give the letter to her tonight when her shift ended. He thanked her with a warm smile and took one last glance around the familiar building before leaving. Wolfgang didn’t like to be late.

The world didn't stop just because the letter had left her fingers. In fact everything went along as normal as if it changed nothing at all, and that seemed wrong to her for some reason. But she was glad, because it meant that he hadn't read it. Maybe it would mean that he'd never see it and it would sit there forever like a piece of their history that never came to pass. That thought wasn't truly comforting, but it was almost better then facing the reality of him opening or finding it.

Leiren walked into the Necropolis like every other day. Her too high for comfort heels moved along the slick floor with ease she'd come to deserve, a half smile on her face as she faked it for everyone. Just like always. But when she saw the girl standing at the bar with an envelope she just knew was only for her eyes she stopped. The horror crossed her face like a slasher flick gone wrong, the world ending in a single moment as it crashed around her shoulders. Her chest was tight, her stomach turned, and she through she would be sick as she just stared at the envelope. It took everything she had to remember to control her emotions or she'd be flying around the bar with crimson wings. Jesus.

Counting back from ten to one, three full times, she finally composed herself enough to take the letter and run into the office to sit her *** down in the chair. She lifted her feet to the desk and laid her head not so gently on her knees. Her heart hurt and she hadn't even opened it yet. She was fully expecting the equivalent of a dear john letter when she finally gathered the courage to open the continence and read what lay inside.

Leiren sat herself up right, opening the letter as if it contained a bomb that would contaminate the whole club with a plague of sadness, hatred, and broken love. And perhaps it would, but she opened it anyway, because she had to know what was inside. Even if she didn't want too, she needed to, for her own curiosity couldn't let it be.

Twice she read over the words written on that page. There were tears streaming from her eyes not because he was going to destroy her, but because he agreed to see her. Even if only in Vathia where all things were not real and not fake but in between reality. She wouldn't even have cried, then, but she wasn't sure she could manage that anymore. She'd tried to see Amara. She'd tried and tried until her heart couldn't take it anymore. How could she tell Wolf that she just couldn't? If she didn't show up he'd be upset and it would hurt him, wouldn't it? So she'd try. Even if she didn't think she could get to Vathia anymore at all she'd try. Because Wolfgang was worth that try.

In fact Wolfgang West was worth just about anything.

----

Leiren laid herself down to rest that night, her mind flying a million miles an hour, but she did her best to focus on her connection to Wolf and prayed for the first time in a long time for Crow to make her powers work.

The sight of his sharply focused and unchanging eyes were unnerving, even as he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror; nothing about Wolfgang West had changed in the three years since he had been turned into a Vampire, nothing but his eyes. The blue there was unnatural and looked as if they had been lit up from behind the lenses. His eyes were not the only thing that said ‘there is something different about this man,’ well, that and his unchanging flesh.
___Wolfgang West would stay youthful as long as the dawn existed, while his now beautiful young human wife, Julianna, would have to fight aging with creams and potions, or hide it behind layers of make-up.
___She stood beside him, scrubbing her cheek with her make-up remover. Wolfgang watched her in the mirror, one side of his lips hinting at a smile.
___“You always watch me take my make-up off. It’s kind of unnerving you know.”
___“Do not,” the tall male protested.
___“You do so!” Julianna snapped with a giggle. “But I don’t mind.”
___“Perhaps I just like the real you, hidden under all that make-up.”
___“Yes, well, if I were as good long as you I wouldn’t need all thi---“
___Wolfgang cut the woman off, closing his hand over her mouth before tipping his head to kiss at the polished cheek. “Stop it, you’re perfect.”
___His arms went around her middle from where he stood at her back and the two of them stared at each other in the mirror for long time that raced by them as if no longer than a moment. “You should go and tuck Noah in,” Julianna encouraged, bumping him with her hip.
___“Okay,” the vampire smiled slowly, “I’ll see you in bed.”

Noah was already tucked up in bed with the book they had been reading. He couldn’t read the words himself but sat quite happily under his nightlight going over pages they had already read this week, re-telling the story as he remembered it.
___Wolfgang watched him from the doorway for a time, smiling to himself. To imagine he had almost given this up to stay in Harper Rock and watch the world rot while he tried to convince himself that this, happiness, was something that he no longer deserved. This, something he had almost managed to do.
___He moved to the edge of the bed when Noah noticed him and curled into the boy, taking the right-hand side of the book, while his son held the left. “Where were we up to?”
___Noah’s excited voice chirped, “Right at the back!”
___“Oh, I forgot we were almost finished.”
___“Yes, only a few for pages.”
___“How many?”
___“Six,” Noah counted, turning the pages as carefully as he had been encouraged to do so.
___“Do you want to read them all tonight, or save some for tomorrow night?”
___“All tonight,” he delivered the words quickly with a cheeky little grin on his face, his small white teeth set in neat little rows, some of them almost ready to come out.
___“Alright,” Wolfgang smiled and started reading once he had found the page they had finished on last night.
___Wolfgang read slowly and with great expression. He had spent years on the force and in front of large groups in his new line of work, pitching ideas and reports to a great deal of people, so he knew exactly what it took to keep an audience hooked. Noah seemed to absorb every word, small gasps sucked past his lips every now and then; his questioning gaze burning against his father’s cheek, searching out the man’s stare.
___Every now and then Wolfgang would look at Noah and offer an amused grin, He found it rather beautiful, the way books could take them away to a whole new word and fill their minds with the kind of creativity he would probably see scrawled onto hundreds of pieces of paper before the next story stole him away again.
___“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it” (Dahl, 1991).
___Wolfgang closed the book and looked at Noah. The young boy was wearing the biggest smile on his face. “Do you want to talk about the ending?” Wolfgang offered.
___“No, I think I’ll go to sleep.”
___“Okay, but watch out for Minpins,” the vampire teased, setting the book down on the chest of drawers before tucking Noah in. He kissed the boy goodnight and went to the door, pulling it closed behind him, only to leave it open just a fraction in case the boy got up in the night.

When Wolfgang got to the bedroom Julianna was already fast asleep. Thomas seemed to be drifting off too, tucked up like a little caterpillar in the soft white blanket that Julianna had made from scratch. He admired just how much this woman loved her children and for that he loved her.
___The tall vampire undressed and put on his bed shorts before crawling into bed carefully. Even now it seemed strange that he was sleeping through the night and waking up to spend the daylight hours as they were intended. Hopefully his family would let him sleep in so that he could wait up in the realm of dreams, looking out for the woman in the white dress.

___She had burned his paradise to the ground, but when he stepped into this world it seemed renewed. The grass was long and swayed gently in the breeze. The hill slowly slopped up towards a familiar weeping-willow; its vines long and flush with small green leaves.
___It was here in the shade of the tree that Wolfgang sat and waited for Leiren to make an appearance. For weeks he had been coming here, wondering if she would join him, and for weeks he had been left disappointed… until tonight.

Leiren awoke in his dream, her eyes piercing as she looked around and took in every small detail she’d cast from her memory, once more committing it to that place she needed to hold onto but refused to acknowledge. Wolfgang was here, she knew, because she could feel it deep in her bones like an ache that couldn’t be cured. Their bond seemed to just call her to him. Her dainty ballet flats didn’t keep the tall grass from tickling her feet and legs which weren’t covered with her shorter dresses, it was the same way in real life, and so it would always be the same in these dream worlds. They didn’t actually alter dynamics afterall, you were always going to be limited by your own mind. Things that were ‘given’ like gravity weren’t ever changed, at least not that she’d ever seen, but part of her wondered if you could actually change things to be without laws of earth, time, and space. That, though, was something for some other time.

For now her mind was simply set upon seeing him and when her eyes drank him down like a very fine wine she was left feeling light headed and almost.. woozy. A heady feeling that seemed to swipe you by the moment you decided to stand. She wasn’t positive she could make her feet work anymore, nor her hands, arms, legs, or lips. Leiren just stood and stared, feeling the weight of the world in that one image of him after so long. Slowly she fell to her knees in the grass, feeling like she had to gasp for breath that she really didn’t need, her heart suddenly weighed a million pounds and she put her hand over it without even thinking about the motion. Tears. She was crying, again, without sound, without sobs, just tears spilling down her porcelain cheeks out of way too translucent eyes.

If Leir could see herself she’d have realized that she had a problem, that perhaps she loved too much, needed her powers too much, needed everything too much like a person with a serious addiction problem. Instead she’d never know, never even see herself and the sunken sockets of eyes, the way her hair was almost too thin, the way she looked like she needed to be locked into rehab for years while constantly dealing with relapses. How her bright red lipstick and grey eyeshadow stood out too much against her skin. Leiren looked positively ill, but she hadn’t noticed herself in months, and now in front of Wolf all she could manage was to stare.