Slowing Things Down
Aaron watched his best friend walk out the door and continued to ponder his comments. Of course, Elliott had no idea that Cadence heard every word that he said. He likely assumed that she had turned her feed off, but the leader had purposely left her on. Despite his frustration, Aaron wanted her to know how the debrief went, what the others had to say, that he recognized the contributions she had made, and that he realized that others had made errors as well. The thought that his best friend might actually be right was more than a little unsettling.
Once everyone was gone, Aaron walked back to where he had left Cadence. He opened the door but didn’t go in at first. He just stood in the doorway looking at her. Clearly, she had been crying, but she wasn’t just then. After a few moments he finally entered, pulled a box of tissue off of a shelf, slammed it on the table and sat down across from her, his arms folded across his chest.
She looked at the tissues, but seemed resolved not to use them, or even touch the box. Her mouth opened, like she was going to say something, but she closed it. He imagined she had dozens of questions burning in her mind, but she waited for him to go first. After all, he was clearly the one in charge here, or at least he thought he was.
He wasn’t exactly sure where to begin. After considering his options for what seemed like an eternity, he finally asked, “What in the world possessed you to disobey my directives and give chase to a Vampire on your own?”
It took her a moment to answer. Whether she was trying to gather her thoughts or keep from crying again, he couldn’t say. But when she finally began to talk, her voice quivered slightly “Does it matter?” she asked. “What’s done is done.”
Taking a deep breath, Aaron tried to keep himself calm. “Yes, yes it matters. It matters a lot, quite frankly. You’ve always done exactly what I’ve asked you to do until tonight, until it really counted.”
She sighed and shook her head. “I can’t even explain to you why I did it. I just... had to. It was instinct. I saw a Vampire getting away, and I had to get him.”
The answer seemed ridiculous to him on the surface, like an excuse, but when he looked at her face, it seemed as if she was telling the truth.
Nevertheless, it didn’t excuse her behavior, and every time he pictured the scene in his mind, that child dangling out the window, held in the deadly grasp of a monster, he wanted to slam something into the wall.
Hearing the anger in his own voice, he tried to explain to her, in terms she could understand even without a lot of experience, exactly how critical the situation had been. “I want you to realize that never, in over one hundred fifty years of working in this field, have I ever, not once, seen a Hunter do something so reckless and stupid. Not one time.”
Cadence’s large brown eyes narrowed, and she pursed her lips together for a moment before answering. “Then, I guess, I’m just an idiot.” Her tone was dry, perhaps a little condescending, but with a ring of truth to it, as if she truly believed what she was saying.
It just pissed him off more.
“No, you see, that’s the thing," he said, uncrossing his arms and leaning toward her. She leaned back further in her chair, as if she was afraid of him. Maybe she was. Maybe she should be…. “You’re not an idiot. It’s like you weren’t even listening to me. At all.”
Cadence’s voice was still almost monotone as she admitted, “I wasn’t. I wasn’t listening to you. Literally.”
Flabbergasted, Aaron got out of his chair, the screech of metal on linoleum grinding against his last nerve as he hovered over her. “You weren’t even listening to me?” Her expression didn’t change as she just continued to stare at a random spot near his shoes. “If you weren’t listening to me, then what the hell were you listening to?”
Lifting her gaze to meet his, she finally seemed to snap out of her stupor a bit. “Nothing!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands up into the air. “I was just reacting. I wasn’t intentionally disobeying you. I think I did hear you once or twice, while I was sprinting across the parking lot, and before I jumped the fire escape, but what you were saying wasn’t registering!”
Her frustration lit a fire inside of him, and for the first time in a couple of decades, Aaron felt himself slipping out of the clutches of his own self-control.
Turning around, he ran his hands through his hair. Yet again, images of what could’ve been filled his mind. Cadence’s crumpled body on the floor, the baby falling out the window, being turned, having to be destroyed.
“Do you have any idea what would’ve happened if Henry would’ve scratched that baby?” he asked. Not waiting for her to answer, he continued, “He wouldn’t have even had to bite the kid—literally just one prick of his fingernail and….”
Memories of another baby affected by Vampire venom came to mind as he wheeled around on her. All he could do was slowly shake his head as anger and sadness mingled together, the words coming out of his mouth laced with both. “You have no idea, none, Cadence, what it is like to see a child dissolve into a pile of ashes in your hands.”
Cadence sniffled slightly, but when he looked at her, she didn’t appear to be crying again.
It was honestly a little bit irritating, as if she didn’t quite understand what he was getting at.
“And then… there’s the alternative.”
She looked up, eyebrows arched above her chocolate eyes.
“If the child was infected but didn’t have time to Resurrect, we would have to kill it before it could become a Vampire.”
“Why?” she asked. “What if… it wasn’t evil.”
“All vampire children are evil, Cadence! They have no self-control!” She leaned back even further in her chair, obviously startled by his angry tone.
It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know.
Well, she’d remember now.
As the image of the baby he’d held in his hands as she turned to a pile of ash on the bed filled his mind, Aaron found himself flying across the room, ripping her chair out from beneath the table, and hovering over her, both of his hands on the armrests as his face was only inches from hers.
“You have got to listen to me when you’re in the field, Cadence! All the time! I put my neck on the line for you, letting you go out there when you were clearly not ready, and you fucked up!” The anger raging through his veins as he stared into her wide, slightly terrified eyes, began to morph slightly as he inhaled her scent. She’d slumped down in the chair when he’d wheeled it around, and now, leaning over her, his mouth so close to hers, all of the grief and fury inside of him began to morph into something else.
Especially when she bit down on her bottom lip and the memory of kissing her just the night before flooded his mind.
Seeing her with tears in her eyes, her cheeks streaked from crying earlier, the frightened expression on her face made him want to be the one to protect her—not the one responsible for drilling this lessen into her head.
“Cadence—”
Before Aaron could even get an explanation out, Cadence shot up from her prone position, and her mouth met his in an aggressive, irate kiss that almost knocked him backward.
