Klaus would kill me if he knew about this fiction.
This is my first Lucien and Cami story. It's a bit angsty. I hope you like it. On with the show...
Let it Snow:
Death was appealing. Christmas, not so much. Killing jolly carolers and other unfortunate souls who were foolish enough to come across his path this winter day, now that brought cheer to Lucien's cold, dead heart. This season there were plenty of the lot. He could not seem to get his fill. At this rate, there would be no one to drink for New Year.
Rolling his eyes, Lucien dropped the Santa who had had the nerve to ask him to donate to bloody charity. "I do enough of that all year long, thank you, very much," Lucien uttered to the old man's corpse, curling his upper lip in disgust. The man tasted too much like cheap liquor. It was time for a palate cleanser.
Lucien strode across the quarter, knowing all the while that Klaus was on the prowl, ready to strike at any moment, but that did not give Lucien pause. He knew he that he would die one day. Not today, though. Not according to this lovely seer's portents. No, he had many more days on this miserable planet.
Stopping when he saw a blonde woman standing in front of him in the middle of the street, Lucien grinned. She was an easy mark. Almost too easy.
The blonde did not even seem to be aware of anything around her as she stared up at the sky. "Hello there," Lucien called to her with a smile which lost its mirth when she turned so that he could see her face. "Dear God!" he gasped. There were not many things that shocked Lucien, or gave him pause, but seeing this dead woman did. "Camille?"
"Cami. It's always been Cami. Okay?" Cami replied drily before she returned to her star gazing. "You know, I never appreciated star gazing when I was alive. I thought it was a bit clichéd. Something you see in too many films where people can't remember their lines so they just stare at the sky, trying to look smart," she quipped with a laugh.
"I don't look at the stars often since I have much more amusing sights to see when I'm tearing a young woman, such as yourself's throat open and feasting upon her," Lucien replied.
Cami let out a chuckle. "You know, Lucien, you can't scare me anymore. Actually, you can't do anything to me anymore," she began to laugh with a hysterical note entering toward the end while she wiped away a tear. "Oh, it's good to laugh. I wasn't sure that the dead did laugh. Sounds funny, right? You being one of the undead, you laugh all the time, but I'm not undead, so I wondered, could I laugh?"
"It's a fair question," Lucien agreed, coming to stand beside the ghost, for lack of a better word for it. "I wonder what is it that you want, Cami?"
"If you had asked me that before I died, I would have kept you up all night, straight into next week. Now, I know there are only a few things. I want you to stop acting like such a jerk, and, yes, before you ask, that's me being nice because I have some less G-Rated words for what you are at my disposal," Cami explained, folding her arms over her chest.
"Right. Shall we hear the short version of what I can do to not be a 'jerk' as you so eloquently put it?" Lucien felt amused by this point. Cami O'Connell, even in death, held the stubborn belief that she could change man-kind, or vampire-kind, with her words of wisdom. Did he drink absinth earlier in the day?
"I want you to realize that killing people, just because Tristan did things to you, that no one should have to endure, will not erase your pain. I want you to realize that it is okay to let people in, like Klaus. He's your friend, and from what I have seen of your past and present, you don't exactly have a lot of those. Oh, and be nice to Freya. She's been through hell and come back out the other end, so when you start chasing her again, be nice," Cami stated. "Or I will come back and haunt you for the rest of your undead days. And that is a long time and you know how much I love to talk. Imagine, every day is a new therapy session and no matter what you do, you can't shut me up."
"Perhaps I wouldn't mind if you haunted me," Lucien said quietly, he looked away for a moment. "Maybe I did not mean for you to die. Maybe I enjoyed our little games," he chuckled when Cami stared back at him blankly. "Okay. Okay. I give. I would have driven you insane and kept you for a pet. But what a cute pet to keep, don't you think?"
Cami sighed. "You can either change or die, Lucien. No matter what you think, the Original family will win. So, you're either with them or..."
"Maybe I would prefer option C: where they kill Tristan; Aurora and I live, and they never hear from us again?" Lucien retorted.
"Klaus will kill Aurora. She's already gone. You can't save her. But you can save yourself," Cami argued.
"What are you, one of those Hallmark specials?" Lucien snarled, becoming wary of this conversation.
"No, you idiot. I'm trying to help you since I couldn't get through to you in life, I thought I'd try again," Cami snapped. "Because if you can't succeed—"
"Try, try again," Lucien deadpanned with a roll of his eyes. "Yes, well, I'm a lost cause and you should have figured that out."
"No one is a lost cause," Cami told him slowly, reaching out, she placed a hand on Lucien's shoulder, who jumped back because he felt her hand. He bloody well felt her hand! How was that even possible? Reaching out, he grabbed her, pulling her closer. "See, anything is possible," she said with a smile, rather than the glare he expected.
"How?" Lucien took a lock of her hair between his fingers, toying with it, trying to explain to himself the impossible.
"Look!" Cami cried and Lucien looked upward to see the snowflakes that were falling down on them. "Merry Christmas, Lucien, I hope you remember this conversation," she whispered, leaning forward and kissing him on the cheek.
Lucien closed his eyes, feeling the coolness of the once human woman's lips on his skin, and then, nothing. His eye lids snapped open and he found that Cami was gone. "Cami? Cami? CAMI?" Lucien yelled, turning around and around. He had not felt this kind of despair since he had been human. He had not felt guilt, or remorse or anything that resembled a human emotion and now, now it threatened to consume him as he slid to his knees in the street while the snow continued to fall.
