Even In Death {Gabriel, Victoria}

[Gabriel Sullivan]

Oh, hell.  Someone upstairs really hated him. 

She'd gotten the right idea, kind of, about being dead, but she'd totally run with it in the wrong direction.  His own beliefs involving purgatory and 'moving on' for vampires were going to have to be ignored for the time being, since he wasn't about to get into a theological discussion with her.  He was just going to try to get both of them through this in one piece.

"Kat, shhh.  Just take a breath, please?" he asked her, putting his hands up in a gesture for her to slow down as he approached her side of the bed, then took her hand and pressed it to his own chest -- right above his heart.  She'd put her hand on her own chest, looking for a heartbeat, and hadn't found one.  He didn't want her freaking out about being 'dead' without realizing that she wasn't alone, and he definitely wasn't a ghost.  "You're not a ghost, and this isn't Purgatory."

He watched her for a second before pressing on, giving her that short moment to take in what he said before he continued.  "I was born in 1662, and found a vampire on my ship when I was 26 years of age.  She nearly drained me one night and turned me out of desperation, then left shortly after.  I've been a vampire ever since, but I never turned anyone before now," he told her, wanting her to know that.  He didn't do this lightly.  "You were dying, though.  I couldn't stand the thought of you being gone."

[Katherine Summers]

Kat stopped just enough for Gabriel to get anything in edgewise, and when he told her to take a breath, she did, and ended up gasping in pain. Her lungs felt like they'd never been used before, but she managed to push that blurring around the edges of her vision away long enough to pay attention to what he was doing. She couldn't feel anything against his chest - hollow. Well, not hollow, not really. It was warm, but it felt so... different. Like she could feel every fiber of skin that composed the outside of him, and she jerked her hand back, looking down at it. Heightened senses for the lose?

When he spoke, however, she couldn't help her reaction. She took a moment to let it all set in, and then jumped up, reaching across him to the small compact at her bedside table. She opened it, to look for... teeth. Pressing her lips up, she didn't see any sharp canines, and so she'd looked up at him.

"Gabriel, stop jo..." she trailed off. Something else had caught her eye. In the mirror, her face was different - changed, somehow. She didn't even recognize herself, and she held it at a distance, looking at her reflection. She focused on the entirety of it for a moment, and then zeroed in on her eyes. They weren't brown anymore, they were just... black. She held it closer, even pulled at the corner of her eye, twisting her body to catch light in her iris, and found nothing. She couldn't tell where her pupil ended and where the colour began.

"Oh, God," she whispered. She looked up at him, the gravity of the situation suddenly pressing down on her. Human memories came in little flits and pulses, like the synapses in her brain were firing in the wrong order. She didn't know how, but she knew he wasn't lying, and her fingers closed on the compact so hard that she split the plastic, the small mirror crackling under the sudden pressure.

It fell uselessly from her hands, and she put both of her hands to her face. "No, this can't be right," she hissed.

[Gabriel Sullivan]

He watched her go from silence to movement, humor to understanding.  To horror.  God, how he hoped she didn't hate him for doing this. 

"I know it doesn't seem right, Kat, but it's true.  You're a vampire now, like I am," he told her, trying to keep his voice low and gentle as he reached up to pull her hands away from her face.  He hesitated then, taking in her features as they'd changed.  Becoming a vampire didn't exactly change the way a person looked, but it certainly sharpened their features.  Any changes were subtle, but they mattered.  She'd been beautiful before.

Now, she was stunning.

He didn't want to think that she'd have rathered die than be a vampire like he was, but he couldn't exactly say he blamed her.  Considering his life, he wasn't always sure if it wouldn't have just been better for him to die in one of the many fights and storms that he'd survived because he'd become a vampire.  Kat would have never known him then, however, and more importantly, he'd have never known her.  He didn't like that idea.

"Do you hate it already?"

[Katherine Summers]

She couldn't stop looking at the mirror. She didn't try to pull away from him, but her head was certainly turned and staring at her reflection. "What the hell happened to me?" she whispered. She heard him say vampire, it registered, but it didn't register. "I don't look like me," she said. If Katherine had been the sort that was vain or perhaps a bit on the power hungry side, this may have been seen as a wonderful opportunity, but Katherine Summers was happy to be plain old Kat.

This wasn't really cool with her.

"Yes," she said. "I think I do. Can we change it back?" she asked him, finally tearing her eyes away from her reflection to stare at him. "There's got to be a way to go back to being human. I mean, some sort of stupid spell or rock or..." she trailed off. Gabriel had a very severe, serious expression on his face, and it shut her up almost immediately.

"Change it back," she said again, this time almost pleading with him.