Prelude (Underworld Lucian Fanfiction)

37 - Chapter XXXVII: Of Death and Morning

25th November 1899. 7:21 am.

It was the morning of the next day. The fireworks admittedly still silent, despite a brief episode involving Jacqueline and the master bedroom door, her cries falling on deaf ears and her plan to 'break in' torn asunder by Raze. The finest but certainly not the sharpest knife in the box using concentrated perfume and a cigarette to try and burn the door down. As for Lucian, to say that 'things had gone as planned' for him was not quite accurate either.

Rather, he had started with a plan in mind. He had entered his room the night before and, instead of veering straight for his drugs cabinet, he aimed straight for his writing desk. The massive pile of papers that had accumulated over the past three days. Following Raze's advice, he spent a good half hour skimming the daytime report, taking note of all payments and shipments, signing off on one of two transfers. Solely because of Bess, he looked over the household finances, approving her request for extra beef rations in the coming season of good cheer; and then, having left it for last, he opened the envelope in his pocket.

A very stiff, very plain envelope with a very red seal. Raze had given it to him two days ago, the paper inside probably the most important document in need of his signature. His eyes skimming the code and then rolling before searching for his journal. The same one Reinette had been rifling through that morning on the ship. Dates, dates, dates...two centuries of dates...and now one more. 1900. April 1900, and by the look of things, it would be Wagner this year. Not his favourite choice, but then beggars could not be choosers...especially when it came to a Gathering.

Finding his journal in the liquor cabinet, he wrote the date in code, signed the document and left both on the desk, his right hand now otherwise engaged with opening a bottle of blood-wine. His left hand tapping away incessantly, his legs kicking back, pacing the length of the room, the wardrobe, the bed...and truth be told, ending up in the master bathroom. For it was there that his plan dissolved. There that he remained until morning...

...and to bathe in morning was a beautiful thing in the lycan-master's quarters. Lovely beyond reason, but not for the lycan-master, who by societal norms was passed out on the floor, an empty laudanum bottle within his reach, and beyond that, a pool of something vile. He had been there since half past three, having drunk his way through the bloodwine, having decided four hours ago to spontaneously kill himself, and then, acknowledging the extent of his inebriation, having chosen to wait until after sunrise. No one looked for him after sunrise. Allegra would arrive in the evening. Langley, facing the prospect of Mrs. Fulligan's displeasure, would enter to help him dress. The door would open, and heaven help them, a hell he had not craved for a century would break loose, Jacqueline weeping into her gown, Raze being the only one worth a knife to cut him down.

Was this a new occurrence, one might ask, certainly Jacqueline...this unexpected decision to kill himself in spite of the war, the Horde, the countless lycans whose lives rested on his shadow? Though passed out and the object of much scrutiny, he would have flatly denied it...for he was aware of his problem.

For six hundred years, preaching to people about survival when twenty-eight percent of the time, he wanted to kill himself. Sixty-two percent, living because of other people and ten, contemplating why revenge was worth living as a dead man in a domestic household. Like an empty shell, spending the majority of his time signing documents, approving transfers, negotiating merges... Empty by habit, empty by requirement, yet not so empty that he could not at times become painfully aware of how empty his life really was.

A life with Jacqueline.

Catherine. Helena. Greta. Elizabeth. Suzanne. Allegra. Victoria. The rest of their names in his library, the point being that in all cases, the slighted woman, she whose end he could so easily contemplate, acted not as a filler, but a marker; the figurative point in his life when he began to question himself, dwelling and wondering over the point of his existence. Reason, yes. A horde, a war, a revenge to be had, saving his people from extinction...all manner of reasons for him to exist, but to what point? The answer, at times, within his reach before it dissolved, leaving him with nothing. The prospect of being nothing...having nothing.