Chapter Text
series playlist:
a most sentimental night
you hold me in your sights
shoot me down
and though there ain't no enemy here
you keep me very near
and shoot me down
I look into your eyes
and it comes as no great surprise
you're gonna shoot me down
I know that when you smile
it'll only be just a short little while
shoot me down
in flames
-Nick Cave, “Shoot Me Down”
–
The vampire woman was singing.
Rasputin could hear her from outside, when he was passing by one of the few houses left intact in the village the troops under her command had recently decimated. He'd just arrived, as usual avoiding the fighting when he could help it. Tubalcain Alhambra called it cowardice, but Rasputin considered it self-preservation. His strength lay in mental combat, not physical, and besides, he'd only have gotten in the Huntress's way.
This assignment had been a test, her first opportunity for solo command—and she'd passed admirably. The village's location was of no strategic importance, its inhabitants hardly a threat to the Black King's plans. But they had been numerous, and Rasputin hadn't been certain that Rip Van Winkle could manage on her own, without the other vampire at her side.
But she did, Rasputin thought with satisfaction as he turned to approach the house rather than pass it by, since he'd been looking for her specifically. Better than that fool “Dandyman” could have done with his silly playing cards. At least this one carries an actual weapon.
He pushed the house's door open and stood in the doorway, watching her as she sang in melodious German while literally dancing around the building's single room. She hadn't noticed him, being too preoccupied with twirling her musket like a baton. She was smiling, fearsome white teeth exposed, and her cobalt-blue eyes sparkled in the waning afternoon sun coming in through an open window opposite the doorway.
She's absolutely mad, observed Rasputin, not for the first time, and he smiled too. Absolutely mad. . . and absolutely perfect.
Rip Van Winkle was tall and spindly with limbs like a spider and the smile of a hyena; she dressed like a man and scared most actual men to death, even the inhuman ones she commanded. Yet there was not one thing masculine about her, not her blue-black hair that almost brushed the floor, nor those eyes that could go from limpid pools to icy seas in a blink. Likewise, her face was both off-putting and beautiful by turns; her behavior could switch from cute childishness to terrifying fury with little provocation.
In short, the vampire Huntress was like no other woman Rasputin had ever met, and the very contradiction of her was what attracted him. That, and her fighting prowess, and the fact that she stood up to him. Rasputin resented defiance in a man but appreciated it in a woman, particularly the often teasing, playful sort that Rip often exhibited which was so unlike Anastasia's icy disdain. Even when Rip was truly angry at him, even when she screeched and ranted (and once tried to whack him in the head with the butt of her musket), Rasputin admired her. Maybe it even made him admire her more.
Finally, she noticed him. Halfway through a twirl, her eyes passed over him, then snapped back to his face as she abruptly stopped both dancing and singing. Even then, her movement was graceful rather than clumsy, but her pale skin blushed across her nose and cheeks, under her freckles.
“Oh,” she mumbled. “Rasputin. . . I didn't know you'd were there.”
His smile widened. “That was Der Freischütz you were singing, wasn't it, ohotnica?”
“Oh!” Rip said again, but this time she grinned. “Yes—you know it?”
“Mmhm.” He drifted further into the house. There wasn't much furniture to get in the way of her dancing, only a bed pushed up against one wall and a rustic table with benches across the room. Rip had paused near the latter, and Rasputin stopped about halfway to her.
“I know Weber,” he continued. “Despite how barbaric you think we Russians are.”
Rip laughed, her laughter as melodious as her singing. “Well, I'll admit that you're less barbaric than most, Mönch.”
“Heh. . . .” Rasputin gave a soft chuckle himself and adjusted his glasses on his nose. “Perhaps, but it depends on what you consider barbarism. You haven't seen every side to me yet.”
“Nein?” Rip blinked at him from behind her own glasses, and he wondered if she could really be as naive as she seemed sometimes. At times, she acted completely oblivious to things that Rasputin thought quite clear—the reason why Alhambra so disliked him, for instance.
Rather than clarify, he merely shrugged.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked. “If you're concerned about the company you assigned to me, they're already on their way back.”
“I'm not,” Rasputin replied. “I came here for you, but I was beginning to think you were returning with them, until I overheard you in here.”
“Not just yet.” She grinned again. “I've been enjoying myself, getting to taste healthy blood instead of those fattened weaklings you feed us vampires. That and having some time to myself—I haven't gotten much of that since I joined the Ends.”
Rasputin said with contrition that was even somewhat sincere, “Oh, my apologies for disturbing you, then. I did want to discuss your performance in privacy, but if you'd rather wait—”
“Nein, I meant having some time off from working,” Rip explained. “I don't mind being with you, as long as you're not too critical with your 'discussion.'”
“Ah. Then it's fortunate for me that I came to praise you rather than criticize.” Rasputin settled on one of the benches facing outward from the table, bending his head as he arranged his robes around him.
“Really?” Rip came closer but stopped short of sitting down beside him. When Rasputin glanced up at her, she was gazing not at his face but at his long dark hair, falling down his back and over his shoulders.
“Yes, ohotnica?” Rasputin prompted, raising an eyebrow slightly.
Rip flushed again, not so deeply as before, and mumbled, “Entschuldigung.” Rasputin assumed it was an apology. She plopped down next to him with a sigh. “It's only that your hair. . . it's very beautiful.”
“And why do you look so unhappy about that?” he asked, choosing humor to hide his pleasure at having his vanity stroked.
“I'm not unhappy. . . just maybe a little wistful.” Rip looked at his face then with the sort of smile that made her appear lovely rather than feral. “A man I knew had hair a lot like yours, except his was blond. Looking at you just now reminded me of him.”
As she spoke, her gloved fingers toyed restlessly with the golden, eye-shaped pendant she wore on a long chain around her neck. It had once been a different symbol, one appropriated by her former master, until Rasputin took it from her and had it melted down and recast into the emblem he'd chosen for the Black King's forces.
Rasputin frowned faintly as he watched Rip's hand close over the eye.
“He was your lover?”
“What? No!” she exclaimed with a soft laugh. “He was my friend. He was the most beautiful man imaginable, and I loved him dearly—I love him still. But not like a lover.”
Rip opened her hand and dropped her gaze from Rasputin to look instead at the pendant resting in her palm. In words even softer than her laugh, she murmured, “Luke, mein Liebling. . . he was my friend.”
Rasputin did not understand. She certainly spoke as if this Luke had been more than a friend to her, and he had a hard time conceiving of love between a man and a woman that was neither familial nor romantic nor base sexual attraction masquerading as something more lofty.
But then. . . perhaps she is sincere, considered Rasputin. How could I understand? Friendship is as foreign to me as romance is. He had no friends, had had none even in his past life. He made alliances, most of then tenuous at best, but no friendships. Those were too risky, too likely to tie him down and make him vulnerable.
Romantic love was just as dangerous for the same reasons. Maybe he'd once loved his wife, or thought he did—he couldn't really remember—but he'd suffered no compunctions upon leaving her and their children behind for more ambitious pursuits. He'd certainly never loved any of the conquests that followed.
Looking back from the vantage point of another lifetime in another world, Rasputin saw that almost all his relationships had been strategic, engineered for the purpose of gaining one benefit or another. He hadn't even bothered with the conquests since joining the Ends; he'd had more important things occupying his time.
The only exception to Rasputin's emotional isolation was Anastasia. She'd loved him as a child, they all had. While he often doubted that she still had any tender feelings towards him, and while he often believed that she tolerated him only because he was familiar to her and still treated her like royalty. . . in spite of all that, he did love her.
Yet Rasputin loved Anastasia for the child she had been, the little princess who was now a frozen core within the shell of a woman. That love—he'd call it familial except he'd never cared for his own children the way he did for her—brought him no benefits here in this new world, where Anastasia held no position of privilege.
And it's just as well I love no one else, Rasputin concluded. Rip's love for that man. . . it was likely a weakness when they were together, and now that she's lost him—whether he's dead now or only left behind in our old world—it hurts her to remember him. Yes, she smiles, but at the same time, she mourns him.
He wondered why Rip cradled the Black King's emblem so tenderly as she thought of her friend. What connection could there possibly be between the two? Rasputin recalled how Rip had smiled at him when he placed the recast pendant into her hand and closed his own over it. Now he understood that she had smiled for her Luke, not for him.
Rip interrupted his disgruntled musings: “Anyhow! You were about to praise me for my performance. . . ?”
When Rasputin glanced up, she was looking at him instead of the pendant with, yes, a smile although it was a rather toothy one.
“Ah. . . yes.” Drawing his thoughts back to the present, Rasputin again resettled his glasses on his nose. “As you might have guessed, this assignment was more a test of your abilities than a strategic battle.”
“I did have my suspicions,” Rip agreed, “but I'm certainly not offended. I had to prove myself in the old world too, although I did so in a heli—well, in a flying machine rather than astride a dragon. All that matters is that you're convinced of my worth.”
Rasputin assured her, “Quite convinced—and, in fact, quite impressed, as is the Black King.”
“Hmm. How much attention is he paying Tubalcain and me, though?” asked Rip. “I have the impression that it's you who watches us, and he simply trusts your judgment. From what I've seen, you're the real architect of this campaign.”
Rasputin smiled, again pleased with her admiration. Perhaps it was calculated to flatter him, but he doubted it. Rip hardly seemed the type to bother with empty flattery.
“Well, be that as it may, our Black Lord is pleased with your performance,” he replied. “He agreed with me that should you succeed here—which you've done—you'd prove yourself capable of taking on the Drifters directly.”
“Oh? You mean in an actual fight, one-on-one?” Rip grinned broadly. “Wunderbar! Although I know so little about them. . . just that they are mere human beings, saved from death as we were, and that they come from our world.”
Rasputin shrugged. “There is little else to know. They're generally weaker in combat than us Ends, because as you say, they're mere humans. But unfortunately, some of them have proven to be brilliant strategists. Whoever is pulling them from our timeline and tossing them into this one. . . they're making clever choices.”
“'Whoever'?” Rip repeated with her dark brows drawing closer together. “Do you mean that the girl who brought us here isn't bringing them too? There's. . . someone else? Someone else like her?”
“I cannot be sure,” admitted Rasputin. “Perhaps there really is only she, pitting us against one another for her private amusement. But somehow. . . I don't think so. Things the Black King has said do hint at there being another entity in opposition to her.”
He frowned and huffed in the frustration he usually hid well, “I think he knows. I think he knows exactly who she is, what she is—what they are, if there's truly two of them. Yet he tells us nothing! It's the same with his identity. I have nothing to go on but hints and innuendo.”
“I can understand your frustration, and I want to know more myself. . . but I can't say that I have much sympathy for you,” Rip said humorously. “I've spent the past sixty years kept in the dark by one master or another. I'm used to it.”
Rasputin was not “used it to it” and resented it even more than he let on to Rip. Yet to reveal that would be too great a risk to take. He now trusted her to support the Ends' cause, but not to keep his resentment a secret from the Black King.
And so he changed the subject: “Since I can't give you more information on the Drifters' origins, I'll tell you what we know about the most troublesome individuals among them.”
As he did so, Rip listened intently. She proved to be even more intelligent than he'd expected, asking probing questions and offering insights even he had never considered. Rasputin actually enjoyed the conversation, and he didn't grasp how much time was passing until he realized that he could hardly see Rip's pale face in the waning light.
“Is it already nightfall?” he muttered, glancing towards the window and the gathering darkness beyond it.
“Oh?” Rip looked too. “I see well enough in the dark that I hadn't noticed. Did you mean to return to the base today? It's a little late for that now.”
Rasputin shrugged. “I'd intended to, but no matter. Since you've emptied the village so efficiently, it's safe enough to spend the night here and return tomorrow.”
“Are you certain? There's no food left in town as far as I know, not after the goblins got to it.” Rip turned back to him with a smirk. “I ate plenty today, too.”
“I'm sure you did, nosferatu,” returned Rasputin with an answering smile. “And don't be concerned for me. As much as I enjoy good food when I can get it, I've learned how to ignore hunger.”
Rip laughed, “That isn't something vampires do very well, so it's a good thing I fed so well today.”
Rasputin rose and cautiously made his way through the dim room to a lantern hanging from a rope near the head of the bed, which he lit by tweaking the wick's end between his gloved fingertips. He hadn't thought Rip was paying attention until she observed, “Oh, now that's impressive.”
Pleased, he chuckled nevertheless, “Come now! You've seen what Joan can do. You can hardly be impressed with one little spark.”
“Stop pretending to be modest. It hardly suits your nature.” Rip stood as well and looked from him to the lone bed and back again. “This is when you're supposed to gallantly offer to sleep on the floor so I can have the bed.”
“Oh, is it? I'd intended to suggest that we share it,” Rasputin returned. At her skeptical look, he added, “Though not for the reason you're thinking of. Rather because I detest sleeping on the floor. It destroys my back.”
“All right, if you say so. There's enough room for both of us,” Rip agreed and began shrugging out of her jacket without any of the complaints he'd expected.
She was ready for bed first, divested of jacket, shoes, tie, and gloves. She kept her pendant on and removed her glasses last, laying them on the table before climbing in and sliding up against the wall to make enough room. Rasputin wondered but did not ask why a vampire needed to wear glasses at all.
Rip laughed as he finally finished undressing down to the shirt and pants he wore beneath his robe, by removing his own glasses and hat.
“I thought I'd never see you without that ridiculous hat on!” she giggled. “I was beginning to expect that you're balding on top!”
“I most certainly am not,” retorted Rasputin. He got into bed next to her, the first time he'd lain beside a woman (or anyone else) in a long while. The bed wasn't especially comfortable, the mattress being stuffed with coarse straw rather than the down he was accustomed to, but it was far and away better than lying on the floor.
As Rip lay down flat on her left side, facing him and nestling her head onto one of the limp and practically useless pillows, Rasputin decided that having her next to him was better too. Turned towards her and still propped up on one elbow, he gazed at her with more admiration than he usually granted anyone.
With her eyelids half-lowered in that sardonic way she had, though now the expression was tempered with a smile, Rip asked, “Why are you looking at me that way, Mönch?”
He wasn't sure if she was being playful or merely obtuse. Either way, he assumed that his reply would be effective. It had worked on other women before.
“Because I enjoy admiring a beautiful woman,” said Rasputin smoothly.
It had worked on other women before, but it didn't work on Rip Van Winkle. She only laughed, showing that mouthful of sharp teeth, and scoffed, “Frauenheld! You are worse than Tubalcain, you know that?”
When Rasputin frowned, Rip actually giggled.
“Oh, don't scowl at me either! I suppose that in your mind, comparing you to him is a terrible insult, so I'll apologize.” She yawned and closed her entrancing eyes before mumbling, “Go on and stare at the nosferatu if you'd like. . . I'm used to it. You don't have to lie about your reasons.”
Unseen, Rasputin blinked his own eyes in mild surprise.
“I was not lying. You don't believe that you are beautiful?”
Rip grumbled, “Mein Gott, Rasputin, just stop it! I want to sleep.”
She opened one eye again to glare at him but then, when she saw the completely serious way he was watching her, raised herself up on an arm to mirror the way he reclined.
“Wait. . . you meant it, didn't you?”
“Of course,” he returned, curling one side of his wide mouth in another smile.
“. . . Oh.” She blushed again, the color even more pronounced without her glasses in the way. “In that case, I apologize again, but that's not something I'm used to hearing.”
Rasputin replied, “That's a pity. True, your appearance is unconventional, but you're quite lovely all the same.”
Rip's blush heightened a little, and he saw her long, pale throat shift as she swallowed.
“Er. . . danke. You, um, you are as well.” Then she seemed to regain some poise and went on dryly, “Although it's a bit odd that you've chosen to be so pretty—I don't mean in a feminine way. Luke was pretty too, and he was definitely all man.”
Rasputin bristled all over again, wondering why she was so insistent upon comparing him to the other men in her “life,” so to speak. But before he could be too offended, Rip finished, “Still, it's odd. Who are you trying to impress?”
The question made him focus on her wording, and he asked, “What do you mean by 'chosen'? Wearing my hair long?”
“No, not that, specifically. I mean, um. . . .” Rip hesitated then gave a shrug of the shoulder not bearing her weight. “At the risk of offending you again, you don't look much like your photographs in the history books, back in our world. I assume that's because of magic or something? Like a beauty spell?”
“You mean a 'glamour,'” Rasputin corrected absently. “And no, I've used no magic on myself—at least not to change my appearance. You're right that I did not look much like this before I came here, and since it's the truth, it doesn't offend me.
“Yet the first time I looked in a mirror on this side of the black door between our world and this one, I saw myself the way you see me now. I don't know if it's due to the transition between realities, or a side effect of our Black Lord healing my wounds. . . or something else. But whatever the cause, this is really what I look like.”
Rip's eyes drifted over his face before she mumbled, “Oh,” again. Rasputin took her awkwardness as a sign that perhaps she wanted him after all, and he smiled once more.
“That being the case, I'm flattered that you find me. . . 'pretty,' ohotnica.”
“Ja, well. Don't let it go to your head, Mönch,” muttered Rip.
Rasputin considered his next move with a little rush of excitement, the likes of which he hadn't experienced in a long time. Flirtation—at least with an admirable, intelligent woman as opposed to the simpering twits he'd usually settled for—flirtation was as much a game of strategy as was chess, or war. He hadn't come looking for Rip that day, or even climbed into bed with her, with the intent to seduce her. . . but there they both were, and considering that he hadn't gotten laid since setting foot in that backwards fantasy world, intercourse would likely be beneficial to his health.
. . .Or maybe not, since it would be intercourse with a prickly German vampire who held a disdain for men in general, and Russian men in particular. Like the sort of spider who kills her mates, Rip might very well decide to eat him if he couldn't satisfy her.
He smirked, partially because he found that thought quite amusing. However, most of his amusement was directed at himself, because he also found that thought extremely arousing.
What a delightful challenge that would be! he exulted. To please her or die. . . and when have I ever failed to please a woman?
Rip's melodious, accented voice broke into his thoughts: “You are looking me like that again, and you're smiling.”
The sardonicism was back in those low-lidded eyes, and their lids lowered a fraction more when Rasputin agreed, “So I am.”
“Then I hope you enjoy yourself. I'm going to sleep,” announced Rip. She dropped her head flat on her pillow again, closed her eyes, and added, “By the way, you'd better not be thinking of trying anything while I'm sleeping.”
“Oh?” Rasputin goaded with an all-out grin. “And what if I do?”
“I'll bite your dick off,” replied Rip without opening her eyes.
Hopelessly outmaneuvered, Rasputin hissed, “Bozhe moi!”
Rip finally opened one eye again as she asked, “What does that mean?” The blue eye was languid as she lifted it to his face; then it widened when she saw the flummoxed expression there.
“It means. . . .” Rasputin hesitated, then gave up on playing the game and said with a rueful chuckle, “It means I have never been so hard before in my life.”
For a second, Rip looked pretty flummoxed herself; then she burst out laughing as she sat up completely.
“You mean it, don't you!” she crowed. “Ach, you're even blushing! I never took you for a masochist, though. Don't tell me you really want me gnawing on your manhood with these.” She parted her lips and poked at one of her fangs with a fingertip.
Rasputin admitted, “No, I wouldn't want you actually to do it. Pain aside, from what you've told me, I'd turn into a ghoul if you swallowed my blood even accidentally. But the fact that you threaten me with it. . . well. I do like that. What a pity that it's a threat to punish me for bothering you, rather than the opposite.”
Rip smirked and cocked her head to one side. “Oh? What would the opposite be?”
With all attempts at strategy abandoned, Rasputin replied immediately: “Threatening to punish me if I don't fuck you.”
Rip's pale lips—all soft curves in contrast to the jagged teeth behind them—parted with her in-drawn breath.
“Scheiße. . . .” He saw her swallow again before she murmured, “If that's really what you want, you should have said so sooner, instead of playing with me. I'm a soldier, not some noblewoman you must finesse. In case you have not noticed by now, I don't understand subtlety—I thought you were only teasing me.”
“Heh. . . well, let's just say that I'm not fond of rejection,” replied Rasputin softly. “It's easier to take if I can pretend I was only teasing by saying I want you. And you yourself make it most difficult to understand how you feel about me.”
“That's because I don't understand it either.” Rip turned her face aside as she admitted, “I'm not exactly. . . experienced in these things. It's confusing. Sometimes you make me feel nothing but frustration and anger, even resentment.”
When she didn't continue, Rasputin prompted, “Only sometimes, though? What about the other times?”
Rip shrugged, now both shoulders, and dropped her whole head to stare down at the few inches of bed space between them.
“The other times. . . I like you.”
Rasputin lifted a hand to curl his fingers beneath her pointed chin, then raised her head up until her eyes met his.
“I like you too,” he said. At any other time in his life, he would have scorned saying such a puerile thing. Yet the way she'd said it hadn't sounded childish at all, and neither did his echo of the sentiment.
And besides, it was true: he did like Rip, and not only physically. She was really the only person he liked, aside from Anastasia, and Rasputin's fondness for the vampire felt completely different from his love for his princess. He understood his feelings no better than Rip understood her own.
But what does “understanding” matter anymore? Not much, not in this strange world, Rasputin decided as he saw the way Rip's intense eyes had softened, just a little, at his words.
He drew her head closer and tilted his own slightly to the side, so that their mouths would align if she didn't pull away. It wouldn't have surprised him if she had, but instead, she merely hesitated. Her lips parted; her eyes glanced down at his mouth. Then they closed as she leaned forward and, rather than Rasputin kissing her, Rip kissed him instead.
–
to be continued