Chapter Text
“Mom?”
Owen’s shoulders slump when he hears Shelby’s voice. He’d really rather be left alone. He’s not in the mood to keep up the charade. But if it has to be someone at his door right now, Shelby is admittedly the least of three evils. “What is it?”
“Can I come in?” They sound genuinely distraught.
“If you must.”
The door opens, and Shelby slips inside, already looking as if she’s about to cry. If she does, Owen knows he won’t handle it well. “I heard you yelling earlier,” she starts.
“Did you.” He’d suspected as much. Any vampire could have heard the sounds he was making from anywhere in the castle. Well, he’s not going to do Scott’s job of damage control for him. “I think you’d better ask your father about that.”
“I will,” Shelby says. “I’m going to him next. I just wanted to say…” She takes a deep breath. “Please don’t fight with Dad. You guys have to get along, okay? Pyro and I were really worried.”
Owen just stares at her. He can’t think of a single civil response. He almost wants to tell Shelby what really happened, but the very idea repulses him on multiple levels. He can’t even conceive of what she might say, how the truth would ruin her. No, he knows. She’d push it down with everything else, pretend it away.
This whole family fantasy is her construction, after all. Owen can’t let himself forget that.
“I’ll try,” he finds himself saying, unable to even attempt to make it sound convincing. The words hang limply in the air between them, devoid of all purpose. Owen has used up every last drop of his ability to pretend.
And still, somehow, Shelby takes it. “Thank you,” she says. “That means a lot. I know it’s not all sunshine and roses, as much as we pretend otherwise. Dad isn’t always the easiest to get along with! I know how he can get sometimes.”
No, you don’t, Owen thinks, and if you ever find out, I’ll kill him myself. Except he won’t, will he? If he can’t save himself, he certainly won’t be able to protect anyone else. He doubts Scott would grant him the dignity to die trying.
He’s pretty sure that fear is the only thing keeping him alive right now.
“But if you tell me you’ll try, I’ll believe you,” Shelby says earnestly, their voice wobbling. “I’m trusting you. And I’ll talk to Dad too, I’ll tell him—I’m not sure exactly, but I’ll figure something out. I promise.”
She goes in for a hug, and the last thing Owen needs right now is someone touching him, but he allows it like always. She wraps her arms around him even tighter than usual.
“I love you, Mom,” she says. “You’re the best mom I could ever ask for.”
—
It’s like she came here on purpose to make sure Owen didn’t get any ideas about leaving. Owen knows that Shelby isn’t like that, that Scott goes to great lengths to keep her out of the loop. They all do. Shelby wouldn’t lie to Owen, not unless they truly believed it was harmless.
But regardless of intent, they’re still helping Scott. They’re still making Owen into something he is not.
A wife and a mother. He couldn’t be more ill-suited to the task, yet all three of them have dedicated themselves to making him fit that mold. It’s impressive, too, how far they’ve gotten. Owen’s been so caught up in all the little things that he missed the forest for the trees. Shelby calling him Mom, Pyro bickering with him like a petulant child, Scott—
His train of thought stops dead. Owen clenches his fingers, nails digging into his forearm. He wants to rip his skin off, to tear into his own flesh. But he can’t even do that—he doesn’t have his claws. How on earth did he ever let them convince him that he was better off without his claws?
He paces back and forth, occasionally casting a dark glare towards the bed. It’s similar to the one—
—but not the same, and this is enough to keep him from tearing the thing apart. Not that it would matter. What use does he have for a bed? He imagines himself lying down for a rest, thinking wistfully back to the days when doing so brought him relief. No such comfort awaits him now.
There’s no mirror in the room, or in any of the rooms, but Owen imagines himself standing before one anyway, and envisions his reflection. He can count on one hand the number of times he stopped to look at his own reflection in life, but now it plagues him. It’s certainly not vanity; no one would ever call him beautiful. He just—
He wants to see what they’ve done to him.
He didn’t care. For the longest time he didn’t care. He even liked it, the idea that someone thought he was worth looking at. It was an interesting change of pace. Now it makes him want to spit in all their faces. They told him he looked nice, they dressed him up to their liking, and the only thing it’s earned him is weakness and vulnerability.
He doesn’t know why it bothers him all of a sudden. He should be grateful he can’t see himself. If he could, he might not even recognize the person in the mirror.
Owen stares at the blank wall and sees her.
Her face is nothing special—it may as well not even be there. Her hair is done up, her dress is just like his, her arms are trembling. With rage, surely. She walks, and she’s more surefooted than him. She speaks, and it’s much the same. She’s not delicate, like a lady of the castle should be, but worn and hardened, like a working woman of the village.
She wears her finery as a disguise. She moves through the world with a purpose instead of waiting for things to happen to her. She masks her intentions, playing her part, severing her sense of self from all the ways they seek to control her.
She stands before him, and an obscene, all-consuming clarity overtakes him. He sees her. He knows her. She’s his only way out.
It's not like it matters, in the end. Owen was never much more than his sickness and his conviction. The first was taken from him long before, and the second has been warped into something unrecognizable. Owen has never wanted anything but revenge. He’ll get it one day, no matter what form it takes.
Scott wants her alive. Alive and pretty and helpless, even though Owen is only one of those things. So Owen, despite himself, wants to stay alive too. He cannot allow himself to leave things like this. He refuses to go out on such miserable terms.
He will find a way to survive this, even if she has to become something entirely new.
—
But how does he get there? How does he change?
It’s got nothing to do with his body. If Owen is to get anywhere with this, he must leave the body behind. It’s a necessary tool, but it’s also the source of his current instability. Dwelling on its agonies will only hold him back.
He goes for the door, but stops himself. The last thing he needs right now is for someone to see him. He locks it, recognizes the futility of the gesture, and unlocks it again. The sound of it breaking will only upset him. His gaze casts around the room and lands once more on the bed.
The most stupidly vulnerable thing Owen could do to himself is to try and sleep.
He sits on the bed, then lies down, fully intending to do no such thing. But, he reasons, what does it matter? He can’t protect himself either way. Just like the lock on the door, his state of consciousness brings him no security here. He knows better now.
Once upon a time, sleep was an escape for him. It rarely dulled his hatred and spite, but it at least eased his pain. Sometimes he even woke up feeling like a different person than the night before. With any luck, he’ll get another 200 years to himself, and the others will forget about him and leave him here.
He pushes his body down, subduing it. Tempering his fury. He closes his eyes, lying flat on his back, and gives himself up to sleep.
—
In her dream, Scott is standing inside the house where she grew up, the one place that should be free of him no matter what. Owen’s body aches in a painfully human fashion, anticipating an attack.
They each hold an egg in their hands. Owen knows what it’s for, and she presses against the center of it with her thumb, prepared at a moment’s notice to crack it open and fling it in his direction. She doesn’t need much. Any excuse at all will do, even the slightest justification.
He smiles at her, fails to say a single word, and before she even notices, the yolk is already streaked across her face.
She shrieks at him, throwing her own egg. She's dressed in nothing but a sheer white slip, barefoot and weak and vulnerable, thin wrists and knobbly elbows. Her waist is tiny in a way it hasn't been since she was a very young child. He could probably grab her with one hand and break into her, and the fear of it overtakes her, turns her into a creature of utter madness. She shouts curses at him, rails against him, grabbing two fistfuls of his coat and yanking him towards the door, beating pitifully against his chest, tearing first at his hair, then at her own. None of it makes any difference. All he ever does is smile.
Then, after she relents and slides to the ground in despair, the yolk of her egg having vanished from his jacket but his still dripping down from her jaw, Scott does exactly what she fears.
He lifts her up, thumbs pressing into her stomach, surveying her like an object. Like a shell. He presses down, testing, frowning, thinking. Not once addressing her. He hikes up her skirt without warning, flipping it up over her chest so he can reach the soft bare skin of her belly.
He effortlessly splits her open.
—
She wakes up terrified, breathing heavily like a panicked fledgling, both hands on her stomach. She can’t feel it. The corset is in the way, too tight around her midsection, and she’s convinced that there’s nothing underneath.
“Shelby!” she yells, twisting and writhing as she attempts to contort her arms behind her and grab the laces. “Shelby, where did you go? Shelby?”
“Mom? Mom, I’m here, are you okay?” Shelby’s voice echoes from down the corridor. They come bursting into the room, rushing to Owen’s side. “What’s wrong? Did you have a nightmare?”
“No, no, I need—” The room is spinning, and she can’t feel Shelby’s hands on her body. “Get it off,” she says, rolling over to her back, hoping they’ll understand. “I need it gone.”
“Your dress?”
“Please. Quickly.” The fear is practically choking her. She knows she shouldn’t be doing this. She’s undressing in front of her own daughter, letting them see what he did to her. But her need to be rid of it is far, far stronger. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay! It’s okay, don’t worry, I’ve got you,” Shelby assures her. She starts pulling the laces out faster than she’s ever done it before, while Owen reminds herself that she doesn’t have to breathe. It doesn’t work. She’s still gasping for air. The second the corset is unlaced, she kicks off the dress, sitting up on her knees on the mattress and squirming her way free.
She lets out the most agonized sound of relief when she sees herself, whole and real and undamaged. There isn’t a scratch left on her from what Scott did, and her stomach isn’t the gaping hole she was so convinced it would be. Nonsense, the whole thing. Hysteria. She’s finally lost her mind. Owen collapses back down on the bed, swimming in the relief and shame.
“I’m sorry,” she repeats miserably as Shelby sits down on the bed beside her. She can’t even begin to explain herself. They must think she’s gone insane.
“It’s okay, I promise. I don’t mind. I want to help in any way I can.” Shelby presses closer until she’s practically on top of her. “Are you hungry? Do you need blood?”
This isn’t right, Owen knows. She’s lying here in nothing but her underwear, only hours after—
—and he knows Shelby isn’t really his daughter, but she still feels the wrongness of it. She’s disgusting. She’s perverted. She’s ravenously hungry, and it’s eating her alive.
“Do you have any on you?” she asks weakly.
“Um…” Shelby trails off for a second. “Yes, right here.” Something is pressed up against her lips.
Her fangs sink in on instinct, and she sighs happily as she drinks, latching on to it. The blood isn't fresh, but anything is good enough for her in this moment. She holds the source tighter, clinging to it like a drowning man.
—
She’s small. Very small. Her father is there, and she adores him. She hangs onto his every word, even when she doesn’t understand them, even when his stories come out blurry and confused and her mother comes in to scold him and rush her away. She listens to the ensuing argument through the wall and understands nothing, but the sound of his voice is enough.
She’s small and she’s standing on a chair while her mother kneels on the ground. Her mother patiently doles out instructions, but her clumsy fingers struggle to do what she wants. The resulting braid is messy, but she feels a sense of accomplishment seeing it throughout the day, seeing her mother fidget with it and sigh and look back at her and smile.
She’s getting bigger, and she and her mother are arguing. Well, her mother is arguing, and she’s trying to stop arguing. “You were young, Shelby,” her mother says. “You didn’t really know him.”
It’s such an awful cruelty to her, being told she can’t love him. She hates it. Why can’t they talk about happy memories together? Why can’t she mention her own father without it spoiling everything?
She’s writing in her notebook about what she remembers of her father’s stories. She’s trying to draw a werewolf, but it doesn’t look right. She’s never seen one before. Maybe she ought to see more of the world someday. Maybe she’ll find her father out there and take him back home, and it’ll be just like the old days.
All she wants is for her family to be happy. She’ll do anything to make it happen. If she manages to bring them together again, everything will finally be okay.
—
“Mom, please,” Shelby says, sounding almost pained. “I don't mind, but Dad will be upset if you go up a level.”
Owen yanks herself back from Shelby’s arm. She covers her mouth, letting the memories fade. She can’t help but wonder who Shelby really sees when they look at her.
“Don’t do that again,” she warns them, even as she longs for her claws. She wants nothing more than to gorge herself on the nearest available source, despite the multitude of reasons why she shouldn’t. “Don’t let me drink from you. It’s not right.”
“Why not?”
Elder vampires shouldn’t drink from fledglings. It should be the other way around. Owen should be the one providing sustenance, but she can’t. They won’t let her. They’ve gone to obscene lengths to prevent her from playing that role.
She collects herself. The hunger hasn’t been fully sated, but it’s enough to allow her to dismiss the fit of madness that possessed her earlier. She almost looks down at herself, but recognizes her mistake. She is not her body. She cannot let it control her.
“Help me get dressed,” she instructs, rising to her feet.
“Are you sure?” Shelby asks. “You seemed really upset about it earlier.”
“Do you see any other clothes in this room? I can hardly walk around like this.”
“We could trade outfits!” Shelby offers, her eyes lighting up. “That could be fun. I think you’d look really pretty in my dress.”
Owen considers it. Then considers Shelby wearing the same dress she wore while—
“Absolutely not,” she snaps. Shelby looks crestfallen.
“I’m sorry,” they say. “We don’t have to. I was just trying to help.”
Owen recalls the flashes of that little girl looking up at her mother. Curls her lip at the thought of her adoration for her father. In Shelby’s memory, their mother’s words are all but meaningless, but Owen can make better sense of it.
“You were young, Shelby,” the woman says. “You didn’t really know him. There was a reason I kept him away from you as much as I could.”
There’s a look in her eyes that, a day ago, Owen wouldn’t have thought much of. Maybe she would’ve been unsettled by it, but she wouldn’t have understood what it meant. Now she understands. Now she looks at Shelby and wears the same expression.
She thinks Shelby understands too, in her own way. She’s been trying to recreate Owen in the image of her mother, and with the help of her new father, she’s succeeded. She got her happy family.
For her sake, Owen will destroy it all over again.