Your Blood is Mine (Vampire's Revenge) - Chapter 84

Chapter 84: Captain Hook (Part 4)




The next morning, Vladstin felt something wrap around him.

He ignored it, and went on to find the Gigesdi Chieftain Sangfroid.

He was brooding over the highest point of the mast, wind blowing on his hair. He seemed to be very lost in thought, and always, like how the Lost Ones will always be lost in Neverland and never quite belonging there even if they spend eternity in it.

No one truly belongs in Neverland.

Sangfroid said so himself. Even the 'natives' like him do not have a sense of belonging in its unchanging seas and islands.

"That is why I am quite grateful to you...." Sangfroid sipped his bottle of moonshine in the most dignified manner, making it seem like he was merely drinking water and could not possibly be any less sober since they started.

"You're getting too drunk, Great Purple Eye." Vladstin took the bottle from him. "You? Thankful to me? Everyone would say you are out of your mind if they heard that."

"I'm thankful for many things." Sangfroid said, looking at the stars. "And they are very reasonable reasons."

"Heh, alright then. List down your reasonable reasons for me." Vladstin found his drunk demeanor adorable.

"One, I had an excuse to go out of Neverland. I've always wanted to, the fresh breeze is so suffocating in there."

Vladstin nodded. "Alright, suffocating fresh breeze doesn't make any sense, but go on."

"Two, for taking care of Leron before I met him." Sangfroid said this with a frown. "Not, actually, this is also one of the reasons why I hate you."

"It could be both." The pirate captain offered.

"Mn." Sangfroid lowered his lids by just a millimeter, the only sign of his tipsiness. "Third.... And lastly. You made me realize that I could also be wrong."

"How so?" Vladstin gave him a new full bottle, seeing that he had opened up so much by being under the influence.

"Everyone makes it seem like I'm always right. The flowers that grow on my feet are right. Taking away your mutilated hand is right. My existence.... Is right."

"I have always doubted it. All of it. " As he said it Sangfroid gave the moonshine a full swing, gulping and letting a bit of it trickle from the edges of his lips.

"You doubt your own existence. Well.... That's interesting."

Vladstin touched his chest, feeling an odd sense of..... warmth. Like somehow, he felt understood.

"If there is one thing I would never doubt, it would be my loyalty to Leron." Sangfroid said.

Vladstin suddenly had the strong desire to make him doubt even that.

"One, two, three.... That doesn't really seem like many reasons to be grateful at all." Vladstin said, filling his dead lungs with the cold air. "And you're reasons are all.... Odd. But I accept your gratitude."

He then grinned. "And so, what do I get?"

"What do you get?" Sangfroid repeated.

"Yes. What do I get in return? For this 'gratitude'." Vladstin gave him a mischievous glance that seems to be scheming something.

Sangfroid thought about it, rubbing his chin.

"Anything."

That was his short answer.

"Anything?" Vladstin chuckled. "Are you quite sure?"

"Mn." Sangfroid nodded.

"You wouldn't go back on your word? You really would give me anything?"

"Mn." He nodded again.

"Even if I ask you not to love Leron anymore?"

Sangfroid's eyes then widened, and he quickly shook his head. "No."

Vladstin laughed louder. "Hahaha! I thought you said 'anything', and that you wouldn't go back on your word?"

"No." Sangfroid shook his head. "Anything but that. I will always love Leron."

"Hehe, I know." Vladstin nodded. "I know."

They gaze upon Polaris at the distance, shining brighter than the rest of the stars that scattered in the heavens like fallen petals in a pond.

"I was just testing you. No, more accurately...." Vladstin flicked away a stray strand of Vladstin's hair. "I was teasing you."

"Teasing....?" Sangfroid narrowed his eyes. "...Don't tease. I never get teased."

"I suppose you aren't! But your reaction is such a delight that it's hard not to be tempted to!" Captain Hooks rest his face on his reattached hand and sighed. "Hmm.... But if I'm going to be completely honest, I can't think of any way for you to return gratitude either."

"You're so inexpressive that any of them wouldn't feel genuine."

Sangfroid blinked, like he had just taken an unexpected jab. That statement really did hit him where it hurts.

"I'm.... Inexpressive." He said, very slowly and depressed.

"Haha! But that's alright, I like that about you! It's fun to try to gauge what you truly feel behind that impenetrable and unreadable exterior." Vladstin patted his head. "I'm not sure about anyone else though."

"Do you think Leron.... Doesn't like that I'm inexpressive?"

Vladstin already knows the answer, but pretended to be stumped on the question.

Leron is much more observant than him, and if he had already grown and improved enough to see through Sangfroid, then the Chieftain's inexpensiveness is nothing to him. It is never a bother, but that's not to say it's a 'delight' either.

But instead, Vladstin said. "No. I think he would be bored of you eventually if you keep being that way."

"Bored of me...." Sangfroid lowered his head.

"Heh, but you can train yourself!" Vladstin lifted his chin up. "You can train to be more expressive in terms of showing your true feelings."

Sangfroid's one amethyst eye beamed. "How?"

"You could train with me!" Vladstin gave a wide wolfish grin. "Think that I was Leron and you would confess."

He had already told the history of his relationship and where he and the Ilvedian prince stand at the moment, and Sangfroid respectfully did not ask anything more about it. But Vladstin still kept on pressing him about confessing, even when he already said how the subject made him feel uncomfortable.

When faced with such hopelessly annoying persistence, one could only yield.

"You'll never be Leron." Sangfroid said, like it was his final bluff that he could pull.

But Vladstin kept his poker face on. "Of course! Do you not know what 'play-pretend' means? Have you never played imaginary games during your childhood."

Sangfroid shook his head. "We don't play games like that, because we don't like to lie. But I know what you are implying. I guess...."

He looked at Vladstin lazily with his one way, his mind soaked and drowning in alcohol. "It wouldn't hurt."

But as we return now to the next morning where they are sober, it did hurt Sangfroid.

It hurt his pride as a self-proclaimed loyal man.

When Vladstin joined him, the first thing he said was: "I was tricked."

Vladstin grinned and clicked his tongue.

"That's unfair, don't you think? To say that I tricked you." He went closer. "I merely made a suggestion, and you agreed to it. How is that a trick?"

He reached out to move away Sangfroid's fringe, but the Gigesdi Chief gripped his wrist like he wanted to break it.

"Do not touch me," Sangfroid said coldly. "Never again. I won't be fooled by you ever again."

The hand he was holding was the same one that was cut off, so it is much more susceptible to breaking. Vladstin winced.

"You're hurting me, Purple." He said both pitifully and teasingly.

Sangfroid let go, eyes still narrow as a falcon's. He spat on the ground and walk past Vladstin. "We'll be approaching the beach of Polaris soon. Until then, don't talk or approach me."

"Aye, aye, captain!" Vladstin saluted him as he left.

"I'm not the captain here." Sangfroid frowned. "You're the one controlling everything."

"Heh, That's a double meaning if I ever heard one." The former Captain Hook gave a wry smirk.

But for the first time, he really didn't talk to Sangfroid again.

Instead, he walked towards his quarters and closed the door behind him. He crossed his arms with a genuine frown.

"Show yourself. We're alone."

He was staring at an empty space by the desk, with only the dim light of the lantern and the shadows it cast in front of him.

But soon, these shadows moved and stretched, until it became the fool height of a man.

It spoke.

"Vladstin...." It said in a very sorrowful and aching tone.

"I told you not to interfere, Darling." Vladstin flicked the shadow on the forehead.

"I know. But....." The shadow clenched his fist. "You really didn't mean that, don't you? You said that precisely because you wanted me to sneak my way here."

Vladstin just yawned. "I don't know what you're talking about."

The shadow grabbed his collar and pinned him to a wall! "Don't lie to me! You meant for this to happen, didn't you!? You planned everything from the start! You wanted me to see it! Why!? Why!?"

The shadow's shoulders shake and it was heaving loudly, like it was sobbing. "Why must you..... Hurt me like this?"

Vladstin scrunch up his eyebrows, then he laughed.

"Haha, my guess was correct."

He lifted the shadow's chin with his long and sharp finger. "Darling, you are so full of yourself."

Though it had no face, you could tell that shadow was confused. "What? I'm full of myself....?"

"I knew from the start that you would think I was doing this to hurt you." Vladstin grinned. "Getting chummy with the Great Purple Eye, acting like I am interested in him just to make you jealous. It is so like you to expect such things."

"But, Darling. It was all real. I was never acting for you."

The shadow immediately let go, letting out a gasp.

"I can still feel the traces of his kiss last night...." Vladstin's face reddened, a strange expression as he put a hand over his lips. "So warm, so full of life. The kiss that was meant for you. It felt so exhilarating to steal it, but it was not the stealing that I enjoyed the most."

"Sure, I hit two birds in one stone!" Vladstin chuckled, drawing his head back and spreading his arms. "I manage to get my 'revenge' or whatever you want to call it on you by making you jealous! But that's not what I truly want! I just wanted, genuinely, with all my heart, to kiss Sangfroid!"

"He was stranger I just met yet fall so hard for! Rational people like you would find that hard to believe, and that's exactly your downfall!" Vladstin laughed like a maniac, backing the shadow step by step into a corner. "Now that you've learned the truth, the pain is twice than it would be if it was just an act, right!? Your heart must feel like it was getting beaten to a pulp, right!?"

The shadow could not answer, still shaking tremendously not from crying, but from fear.

"Isn't it a wonderful feeling? Despair, it feels so good that there's even some kind of twisted perverse feel to it! The betrayal.... It felt so devilishly good that I'm starting to want it all over again!"

"You made me feel it for the first time, the agony so sweet and suffocating that you just want to die! And now I've returned it to you! Isn't it good? Tell me, isn't it so good?"

The shadow could not answer, terror striking it again and again with every word Vladstin says.

Vladstin hugged himself, sweating hard and swaying from side to side like a leecher. "You understand now, right? How I feel. That feeling..... It is like an alcoholic drink so good that once you get a taste you start to want to drown in it along with the whole world! The pain of love and betrayal!"

"I have fallen for Sangfroid for that sole purpose, not because I wanted to smite you!" Vladstin was in tears now from being so worked up by the thought of it. "Once he becomes the reason for my second death, I would feel that beautiful pain all over again! I need it! I need it so badly!"

He could see that it only dawned upon the shadow now, and he can't help but find it so funny.

This is the first time that Leron had realized that he truly was, and had gone utterly insane. He wasn't being smart or cunning. He was being true to himself, someone who had lost his irrationality to the point of no return.

And it was because of him.