Nobody's Side

by L'Phantom

Urs sat at the bar with her glass and looked out at the patrons. Everything in this world had gotten so confused; once clearly defined lines were now fuzzy and distorted. She didn't know how other vampires like Vachon and Nick did it -- went through the years, watching the world change around them while they do not. Relatively speaking, she was young, she knew that, but the decades still weighed heavily on her mind.

They were decades she had never intended to live. She had asked Vachon to let her die. She had that desire then as sure as she had it now. Instead, life continued to afflict her like a plague because of Vachon's choice.

But it was her choice, too, wasn't it? She had stood at the brink of death that night over a century ago and chose to turn from it. Why? Urs tugged at something in her past, trying to focus on it. What kept her going? She wanted death, and yet she chose life. She made that choice every night, the choice to survive, to go on. What did that mean?

For a while, it was Vachon. She stayed with him because he fascinated her. "We don't live to kill, we kill to live," he had told her. But, having watched him drain the life from countless people, she knew better. There was a pleasure in the killing. Almost as much as there was in their lovemaking.

But that was over now. They didn't "run as a crew" anymore, as Vachon put it. And he was too busy with his mortal to want her, anyway. Something in her heart told her to leave Toronto and Vachon behind her. She drained her glass and left the Raven to walk the streets.

Urs walked all night. She was looking for answers to questions she was too afraid to ask.

She had asked Vachon to bring her here, to his native Spain. It was quite beautiful. The buildings, the old ones, were monuments to a culture long ago left behind.

"But why?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I just do. It's important to me."

"Look, Urs, society changes. People; humanity changes. I don't know why it happens. It just does."

"But you've watched it change for three hundred years. Surely you know something of why!"

Vachon slammed his bottle down so hard he nearly broke it. "I said I don't know! I don't care! They are just cattle for the killing! Who cares about their little society and their pathetic morals!"

"You're drunk, aren't you?" The pain was evident in Urs' voice.

"Yeah? So what if I am? Who's going to do anything about it? You?!"

He kept ranting, but Urs had left by that time, tears staining her clothes with crimson.

Urs realized in that moment that Vachon had never really given her a straight answer to any question she'd ever asked him. Ever. Especially when she asked him why they had to leave. And she asked him that every time they left; it seemed they never stayed in one place for more than a few years anyway. He could never explain it to her in a way that she understood. He was always running from something. Yes, the Inca, but it was more than that.

Then there was her. She could never leave. Many was the time that Vachon had forced her to pack up and move on. Urs always wanted to stay, to do something, to change something. There had to be more to life than dancing for men every night; men who reminded her of her father. But she always came back to it. And she had never understood why.

She wasn't really alive. She wasn't really dead. 'What am I?' she thought to herself. LaCroix thought of vampirism as a gift; Nick saw it a curse; for Vachon, it was a release; in Screed's case, it was always a party. Urs couldn't say what being a vampire meant to her. She loved to fly. It had always been the freest she had ever felt, alone in the skies, pushing against the wind. But eternal life felt like a punishment sometimes. A punishment that Urs wasn't even sure if she deserved or not.

She returned to the Raven just as the first rays of sunlight were beginning to break on the horizon. The young, blond vampire made her way to what passed for her room down in the basement, wild thoughts burning in her mind. She would leave Toronto, leave all of this behind her. She would make her own way from now on, by herself, for herself. She began to gather her things. Yes, she would leave and she would leave tonight.

Packing her things would not have taken that long; she never carried much with her. It was a habit she learned from Vachon and their impromptu departures. However, what few things she had got her to thinking. The things she had kept were very important to her for one reason or another, and every time she put one away, she could not help but think of where she got it and why it was special.

A pressed flower brought back a memory of an evening stroll through a garden. A scrap of poetry scribbled on a napkin recalled a night of romance and tenderness. Urs went through them slowly, picking them up, smiling at the memories it called up, and putting them away in her bag. Until she got to one particular item. It was just an old photograph, yellowed and faded around the edges, cracked by time and constant travel. But in Urs' hands, the picture began to shake as her hands trembled and red tears welled in her eyes.

The flashbulb momentarily blinded her, but her sight returned quickly enough. The photographer handed her the picture, showing her seated and a dashing young gentleman standing behind her.

He was Andre Beaumont, son of a plantation owner just north of New Orleans proper. Urs had been seeing him for nearly a year now, and was quite taken with him. When she first met him, she was only intending to woo him for the evening and drink her fill of him, leaving him a corpse. But during their lovemaking that night, she had not killed him. Something in her stopped her before she took too much. Every night thereafter, she found she needed less and less of his blood. She was always careful, though, to erase his memory of her feeding until, eventually, his mind blocked it out without her suggestion.

Tonight, he had brought her to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. It was a grand festival, and Urs felt happy, which was something she hadn't felt in a long time.

Urs stared again at the ring on her finger and remembered Andre's words as he asked her to be his bride. She still couldn't believe it. Last night had been the happiest in her existence. She ran up the stairs of the manor house, nodding to the maidservant she passed on the way up.

She burst through Andre's chamber door, intending on surprising him. But it was Urs who got the surprise, as she saw her husband-to-be writhing on the bed with another woman. They were so focused on each other that they hadn't even heard her come in.

Her eyes turned red with anger and she was across the room in an instant. With one hand, she grabbed the woman by the hair and threw her into a wall. Before Andre could even react, Urs had grabbed him by the shoulders and broken his neck. Without missing a beat, she turned and drained the other woman dry, throwing her limp form back onto the bed on top of Andre's body. Urs broke through the window and flew away from the scene, leaving the engagement ring in Andre's dead hand.

Urs really didn't know why she had kept that picture all these years. All it ever meant to her now was sadness and regret. But, she resolved, that was over now. It was time to start anew. Striking a match from one of the Raven's matchbooks, she lit the picture and left it burning in an ashtray as she finished packing up her things.

"What do you mean you're leaving?"

"Just that, Vachon. It's time for me to go. Alone." she hastened to add before he could object.

"But why now, after all this time?"

"I don't know exactly. A lot of things. I just know that I can't stay here anymore."

"Well, where are you going?"

Urs shrugged. "I don't know."

"When will you be back?"

Another shrug. "I don't know."

Vachon thought a moment and then asked, "You are coming back, aren't you? Promise me that you're coming back." He was pleading with her now, but he could see in Urs' eyes that it was too little, too late.

"No, Vachon. No promises. If I come back it's because I want to, not because of any obligation I have to you or to anyone else. I am living my life for me now, not for you, not for anyone." She turned and left before he could say anything else.

Sitting alone in a bar in Ottawa, Urs was propositioned by a handsome young man who was trying to purchase her... services for the evening. Urs was hungry, and she saw this as an opportunity to get a little travelling money and a night's sustenance at one time, so she accepted and allowed herself to be led out the side entrance. He opened the door for her, but then pushed her through it into the alley. The next thing Urs knew, she had been shot three times by the man's friends waiting in the alley.

To make it look good, she even fell down, but when her two attackers moved in closer, she kicked out with her full vampiric strength and shattered a kneecap on each of them. She caught one of them before he fell and drove her fangs into his neck with a vengeance, then snatched the other up and did the same. Urs stood next to the door as she heard the man who had pushed her just on the other side, presumably waiting for a signal of some sort from his friends. Not hearing it, he finally decided to come outside to see what was wrong. The moment he opened the door, however, he was shoved against it by a very angry vampire. The last thing he saw were green-gold eyes staring back at him.

After Ottawa, there was Montreal. After Montreal, there was Vancouver. Then, Victoria, Portland, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and Reno. She never stayed more than a week in any one place. She was deliberately careless when it came to disposing of her kills, almost daring the Enforcers to chase her. The danger of it thrilled her; she felt vibrant, free... she felt alive again.

Most of the time she shied away from others of her kind, but she was also prone to spend the day with one (and sometimes more than one) engaging in violent, passionate, meaningless sexual acts. She experimented a lot in those weeks, making love to men as well as women in different ways, participating in blood orgies, any and all possibilities. And yet, she was always sure to leave before she felt any attachment to them, never allowing herself to get close to any of them.

Sex was not the only expression of her newfound release, but it was one that Urs enjoyed. She tried new things in all areas of vampire and mortal society; it was the best of both worlds, as far as Urs was concerned. And with no commitments, no strings attached, no obligations, she was finally able to let go and enjoy what she had hated for so long... life.

She ran into Vachon again in three years. By some twist of fate, they had wound up in the same city, Atlanta, of all places. Vachon could hardly believe that it was truly Urs that stood before him. She was so changed, so much happier, so much freer.

They spent that night renewing bonds of companionship and love between them. Urs took the opportunity to show Vachon some of the tricks she had learned in her travels. Vachon was... impressed, to say the least. During the brief interludes between lovemaking, Vachon promised that he would never love or want another ever again. Urs just smiled and rolled over on top of him and started again.

Vachon woke the next evening to find Urs gone, and a note on the table. The note read "I'm not ready to come back to you for good yet, but maybe someday I will be. I will see you again. Urs." Vachon sighed deeply and pulled the note to his chest. Urs was finally her own person now. And that was how it should be.

And somewhere between Atlanta and Nashville, in the arms of another, Urs heard herself calling out his name. "Vachon!"