8.1. "Each betrayal begins with trust."
Phish

Co-written with lyricalembrace
[Follows THIS and THIS | Simultaneous to THIS]

Rory stood in the middle of his living room that now looked much like a bomb had just hit it. Not a bomb, however. Just a vampire in a rage that could only be tamed when she reigned her own emotions back in. It was pointless for Rory to even try or he could have gotten hurt. Instead, he had just let her get through it, knowing that waiting it out would be the best thing in that situation. He couldn’t even get clear answers out of her beyond the fact that Xander and Buffy were involved on some level. Whatever it was, Airlie was extremely upset and Rory hadn’t seen her like this is a long time.


Now she seemed to have calmed down a little, standing by his mantle, breathless as she pushed her fiery red and now dishevelled hair out of her face. Rory looked at the mess of his room and threw up his hand. “What the feck, lassie?!” he demanded with a frown. “What the hell is going on? I dinnae even have the luxury anymore of accusing you of having PMS! And for the record, if all lassies had PMS like this, the male species would nay exist because you would have eradicated us years ago.” He kept his distance because her eyes were shining with a greeny-silver tinge, so she wasn’t completely calm yet. The way she was pacing back and forth in front of his fireplace was telling, too. She had a predatory air about her, and he was more than happy to just steer clear. She was only a new vampire in comparison to a lot and she couldn’t easily control her rages or her lusts. She still had a lot to learn with that.

Airlie glared at him out from under the waterfall of red hair and then pounced on him, pressing him up against the wall. “How dare you lead me into the clutches of an army of Slayers! I trusted you! I trusted you when you said you would keep me safe, and you invite one of them into your bed?!” she sneered, and then the angry frustration piqued again, but it eventuated in tears this time, streaks of blood dripping down her pale cheeks. “I hate you for this!” she hissed.

“Ach, Airlie love. Dinnae cry. It’s messier than it used to be, aye? You know blood is a bitch to get oot,” Rory murmured and peeled himself out of her clutches to grab up the box of tissues he had been carrying around with him since he got the flu. He caught the tears before they fell, and the crisp whiteness of the tissues soon became covered in patchy red blotches. “I am not going to let her hurt you, alright? I’m not. I dinnae care how kick-arse she thinks she is and all with the fighting the evil of the world. I willnae let her touch you. But I dinnae understand. You knew she was a Slayer before you even took a liking to Xander, so you knew he was involved by default. It cannae be blood lust that got you into this much of a rage.”

“He is just like them!” Airlie growled and snatched the tissues off him to try and staunch the flow of tears she hated herself for letting escape. “He’s happy to let them all just kill. He’s training them to kill! Hundreds of them, at his own admission! And then he has the fecking hide to try and defend what they’re doing and get all wounded and pathetic when I call them murders! They’re made to kill our kind and you dinnae have any clue how much that pisses me off! But you havenae heard the half of it.” She stopped and gave a dry, humourless laugh before she was piercing him with another flashing glare. “You, I can trust. But you cannae guarantee they willnae hurt me or my kind. That’s why they’re here. Here in our country to create an army of killers and you’re cavorting with them like it isnae anything! Fuck you, Buchanan! I’m going this alone!” She threw the tissues roughly at the wall and shoved him out of the way to stalk to the door.

Rory sighed heavily with a shake of his head. “Airlie, stop,” he said, really trying not to be scared when she turned and locked eyes with him again. She was angry, but he could hear she was hurting too. It was a hurt that had fuelled the anger and turned it into the rage, or there wouldn’t be tears. It wouldn’t have taken a genius to see she had a liking for Xander, and now the wanker had to go and be all Slayer bravado, fuck it. It could have worked so easily, too. Buffy wanted to work with Rory to learn, and he’d had every intention of teaching her about Kindred, the vampire kind that inhabited Scotland more than anyone realised. They were just no threat, and it was why he wanted her to understand. But there hadn’t been any chance to tell her anything, and now the shit had hit the fan. “Did you feed from him?” he asked, keeping his cool. She would sense that he was scared, though. It wasn’t something you could mask, and Kindred could feel that.

Airlie had paused and now she was frowning as she came back over to him to cup his face. “Please, dinnae fear me. I cannae take it if you do. I didnae want this. I didnae want to be feared. I just wanted a normal life, I never asked for this,” she said with a sob. “Do you know how it feels to hear people are creating hordes of girls to want to kill you? You really expect me to nay be angry at that?”

“No, I dinnae expect that at all. You know I understand, lassie. But I really need you to trust me on this. You need to give me a chance to trust Buffy, and whoever she decides she wants attached to her. I cannae say I completely understand the whole Slayer thing, and aye, on the face of it, it sounds like they are pooling together an army of vampire killers, but I know from things she has said that it isnae really like that and I also know that she isnae even really sure what she believes one hundred percent either. With the right information, she’ll understand. She wants to. I definitely cannae speak for Xander. Maybe he feels more passionately aboot it than Buffy, in which case, aye, you should back the feck away. You have to tell me what happened, though, and why you think I dinnae know the half of it.” Rory took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Alright? Talk to me, and quit looking at me like you wanna eat me. You know we cannae do that.”

Airlie closed her eyes and drew in a long breath, letting it out slowly, albeit shakily. “I fed from him. We were getting it on, and I lost control a wee bit. So I erased it from his memory and healed him. He was wiped out, but I didnae drain him as much as I could have. I didnae want to hurt him, far from it. I really didnae want to hurt him,” she whimpered and put her hands over her face. “When he woke up, he was obviously feeling the effects of blood loss, but I told him he had been poorly and passed oot, that he should stay so I could at least know he would be okay until he was back on his feet. I had to take the whole memory, though. You cannae just pick parts of it, you have to take a whole span of time, so he doesnae know we slept together, even if it was amazing. I got angry when he started going on about the Slayer thing and how wonderful it was what they were doing, eradicating the world of evil and I couldnae fight it back. It pisses me off, Rory!” she snapped, clearly still not able to control it now. “Fecking hell, I need you to help me with this. I really need you to help me control this. I hate it. It’s like it isnae me.”

Rory rested his hands on her shoulders, rubbing them softly. “Aye, of course. We’ll keep working on it. You need more time, and you dinnae need it rubbed in your face like this. What else, Airlie?”


Airlie pulled away and was grabbing her hair in frustration as she started to pace again. “The fecking Frenchman. The one you keep saying she is all obsessed and drooly over. You have nay idea what any of this could mean! He’s nay just some random arrogant French laddie, it’s Blaise fecking Richelieu!”

Rory blinked and gave her a thick look. “Huh? Is that supposed to mean something to me, lassie? Do I need to drop into HMV and check oot the classic rock section for some awesome band I’ve missed? I’m nay following, but now that you mention it, aye, he looks like he would have a name like Blaise. He certainly set a fire up my arse the way he was looking at me like he wanted to— No. Ach, you arenae saying what I think you’re saying!” he said with a groan of annoyance.

Airlie shook her head. “It isnae even something you could deduce, buddy, nay matter how awesome you think you are. Blaise Richelieu isnae just one of us, he is the fecking Kindred Prince of Paris! He rules all our kind in the whole of France, and is one of the most notorious Kindred in the whole world. Kindred royalty and indeed even mortal royalty. There is nay a Slayer in this world he is going to let take him doon after he has survived as a vampire for over five hundred years. Can you see what I’m saying here?!”

A strange shiver washed down Rory’s spine at her revelation and he had to close his eyes and shake his head slightly to try and clear it when his mind wanted to try and connect all the dots at once. It was just too damn overwhelming and impossible to fathom. It hadn’t even crossed his mind that Blaise would be one of Airlie’s kind. All he thought was that he was some sort of rich confident tosser who had taking a liking to Buffy’s arse. But this? There was also no way for him to not take the leap from Blaise to Juliette and he clamped a hand over his mouth, still feeling her lips there... her lips all over, maybe? “Oh bloody fecking hell of all demons balls...”

“... doesnae even cut it, laddie,” Airlie murmured in response, wondering how the hell her life had just managed to be tipped upside down.

Again.



Word Count | 1,836