All right this is my payment for last night’s ‘Tracy with an attitude’
story by S. Clark. She decided I was going to write a story with Nat
as the central character (and since I’ve written several Val stories,
this is no big deal.) If she’d really wanted to get me she should have
specified a N&N story <icky, yucky, patooey <g>> 

Anyway, on with the show! Usual disclaimers. Any Dark Perk can archive
this wherever they want, others can ask me at anteros@juno.com (I’ll
probably say yes <g>)

This is a post LK story, so you all know what that entails. Enjoy!

On Their Own

By: Mary Jenkins (5-98)

With her flowing hair, pale dress and haunted eyes, she reminded the
few sleepless souls that saw her of Death itself. Unwelcomed to some
perhaps, but in a ward filled with those wracked with pain, the sick
and the dying, some had silently beckoned her to their sides. 

She could hear their hearts beating, slowly, erratically in some
cases. Some of them wish for death, wished for her to come to them,
but she would not grant them this. She was here for a single reason,
not to feed, not to kill, but…to grant life.

As she walked down the corridor her every movement was slow and
deliberate. She heard the clicking of her shoes the linoleum as she
walked, so she consciously changed her gait until she was moving
almost silently. Everything seemed disconnected, strange and
unpleasant. The fluorescent lighting was too harsh, the smell of
disinfectant too strong, and then there was the feeling of emptiness.
The feeling had followed her around the city, everywhere she went: her
apartment, work, back to -his- place, the hollow ache had remained.
That was one of the reasons she was here now, to perhaps end that
pain, to fill that void, at least partly. 

‘Why here?’ She asked herself. ‘Why her?’ Why was she going to this
girl’s side, someone she hardly knew really, to offer something that
was all at once horrible and glorious? To cheat death, to do something
that she once would have been abhorred to even contemplate? 

Her thoughts were interrupted as she reached her destination: Room 6.
No real significance to the number, yet for a moment she stared
intensely at it, as if it would answer her questions if she just
looked hard enough. Realizing the pointlessness of this, she cast a
quick glance down the hall and slipped into the room. 

The lights were off. The moon shone in through the slats of the cheap
blinds. Only the sounds of the heart monitor, with its slow monotonous
beeping and the wet rasping noise of the respirator echoed through the
room. ‘For some reason sounds always seem louder when the lights are
off,’ she thought. ‘As if struggling to fill the darkness, with sound
if not with light.’ Shrugging off such fanciful musings, she took a
step closer to the bedside. She closed her eyes and said a silent
prayer, thanking whatever mysterious deity that had helped her survive
through the day, had helped them both survive. 

When she’d come stumbling home in the pre-dawn, her collar stained
with blood, her life turned inside out, she’d found the tiny light on
her answering machine blinking. She’d just stared down at the black
box for a moment, as if she couldn’t remember what it was, or why she
should care. Hitting the button a voice she hadn’t recognize had told
her, "There’s been a mistake, Tracy Vetter is still alive." 

A humorless smile had curved her mouth as those words had sunk in.
News of Tracy’s death had been the final straw. Though they’d never
been very close, the thought of her dying had shaken her to the core.
Just one loss too many. It’d been more than she could take. Her world
had crashed into a smoldering heap at her feet the moment she’d
received notice that Detective Vetter had passed away. And then they’d
told her, or rather her answering machine, that it had been a mistake.


Natalie looked down at Tracy Vetter’s still form. The head wound,
abdominal bleeding, probably the shock too, was killing her. Nat sat
down on one of the upholstered chairs, thoughtfully provided for the
grieving family members that often sat vigil in intensive care. She
looked around the sterile room; the walls were painted a cheerful
yellow to help shake off the sense of death, it didn’t help much.
There were no flowers she noticed, no one had bothered. Tracy wasn’t
expected to survive another night.

‘Sad,’ she thought. But then again, who was around to send the fallen
detective flowers anyway? Her boyfriend had been killed, the only
friends she knew of were Bruce, in jail for second degree murder and
Jody, who’d left without a word. ‘There are her parents,’ Nat thought.
But according to the office rumor-mill, Commissioner Vetter was a
politically grasping bastard, and his soon-to-be ex-wife, a lush. "So,
you’re as alone as I am." Nat mumbled, not really caring if she was
heard.

There was someone else who should have sent Tracy flowers, her
partner, Nick Knight. Pain shot through Nat as she thought of him.
After hearing of Tracy’s ‘death,’ she’d rushed to his loft. Lost,
confused…and desperate. She’d asked him to try the cure that less than
a week ago she’d assured herself wouldn’t work. Her heart on her
sleeve, she’d admitted her love and asked for an end. To try and bring
him back, or for him to bring her across. Either way, they should have
been together. But that’s not what had happened. She closed her eyes
against the pain as she remembered:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.

"Damn you Nicholas!" 

Nat heard the words. She tried to turn her head and open her eyes, but
she was so tired, all she wanted to do was sleep. Eventually she did
manage to slit her eyes open and what she saw was Lacroix taking a
large wooden stick to the side of his son’s head. As Nick fell
unconscious to the floor, Nat gave a faint whimper.

Scooping his son into his arms, Lacroix spared her one last look. He
saw that she was still alive, but made no move to help her. He just
took his child and left.

Stunned, Natalie lay there a moment. She was dying. She could feel it.
There was a numbness in her hands and legs, she felt light-headed and
sleepy. But she couldn’t go to sleep, she couldn’t let herself die!
But what could she do?

She cast a longing look at Nick’s cordless phone, it was only across
the loft, but it might as well have been clear across the country for
all the good it did her. So she couldn’t call the paramedics. ‘They
probably wouldn’t have been able to get here in time anyway.’ She
thought. Even with an immediate transfusion she might not survive. Her
eyes franticly searched the area, she didn’t want to die!

Her eyes landed on her bag. Instantly something horrible occurred to
her. Could she? Dare she? She took a deep breath and crawled the few
feet to her black medical bag. Movement was agony, every inch like a
mile.

Finally she reached it, she paused for a moment, but as the feeling of
dizziness almost overtook her, her resolve strengthened. Wrenching
open the bag, she pulled out her only hope: A vial of Nick’s blood.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.

Nat shook her head to clear it, no point in rethinking that decision.
What was done was done. Now she had to make another choice.

Nat had felt an emptiness in her ever since she’d come across. More
than just the loss of her friends, and of Nick, this was the void her
master should have filled, at least that’s what she supposed. Would
creating another vampire help fill it? Not that that would be the only
reason to bring Tracy across. Ever since she’d stopped Nick from
saving her that night, she’d felt guilty. Maybe it was meant to be
this way.

Tracy was bleeding internally, somehow Nat could tell this. If she
didn’t act now she would die. Sighing and realizing that her logic was
quite flawed but not caring, she again opened her bag. She pulled out
a syringe; it was filled with another sample of Nick’s blood from the
supply she’d kept at the lab. "Somehow it seems more poetic for Nick
to be both our masters," Nat said, "or maybe it’s because I just don’t
want to be wholly responsible for what I’m about to do." She added
wryly, a hint of her old humor shining through.

Lifting Tracy’s pale arm, Nat quickly found the vein. And with a swift
push, sent a measure of vampire blood into her. Now, all she had to do
was wait.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

Well? Send all comments and Lacroix’s home number to anteros@juno.com