Self Reflection

Matt stared at the unconscious Skylar, whom lied on his living room couch. He needed her to calm down, she couldn't be hysterical, it was dangerous for her own well being. When a shapeshifter's emotions heighten, they act like a drunken man, doing reckless things that they don't remember when they gain their sanity back. When Skylar smashed her hand on the countertop, he knew it was time to use his power against her.

"Sleep." He had said.

She fell into his arms in a deep sleep, or at least it was that at the moment. Now she laid on the sofa restless, moaning and crying, and murmuring names. He heard his own name at one point, but assumed they were terrible thoughts. 'You turned me into a monster.'

A sire can control his shifter when their emotions have gone haywire. When Skylar freaked out, he was able to put her to sleep. Other sires use their shifters as weapons, purposely making them lose control so they can control them.

Matt wondered what she was thinking, what she was dreaming, if she was dreaming. For all he knew she could be trapped in a nightmare he sent her in, that's how she felt when she was awake. He winced.

"Speak." He commanded.

"What do I say?" She asked, her voice neutral, as if she was there but really wasn't.

"Tell me what you see." Matt sat on the coffee table in front of her and took her hand.

She paused a moment, then spoke in the unreserved voice again, "It's dark, cold. Nobody's here, no wait, a boy. He's in the light. No not just a boy, it's Christopher. He looks different. He's dirty and his clothes are torn, he's crying for help." Skylar sobbed.

"I'm sorry Sky." Matt kissed her hand.

"Now there's a girl, with blue lips and red hair. Her eyes are red, and her teeth are sharp."

"Vampire."

"She's biting him!" She cried, flailing her arms and legs. "No! Stay away from him!"

"Skylar!" Matt bundled her in his arms. She hit at him and cried into him.

"No!" She shrieked, "Get away from me!"

"Awake."

Her blue eyes opened, she stared up at him, "How'd you do that?"

He didn't release her, he held her close to his body, "What do you remember?"

"I hit the counter and it broke, then I fell asleep, and oh my gosh is that how he died?" She cried into his shoulder, grabbing the soft material of his shirt rubbing it between her fingers.

"I don't know Sky, but I'll do everything I can to find out."

Skylar let herself cry into him, she let him hold her. He bent down and kissed the top of her head.

~~~

Matt kicked a steal door letting it ring loud and hard like a base drum. Skylar looked at him confused. "It hurts my hands when I do it." He shrugged.

"How did we get here?" She asked looking around the alley they were in.

"You'll find out all the answers to your questions soon." He replied, staring at the door.

"Are the answers to my questions in here?"

"No," he laughed, "we're here to have a good time."

"When do I get my answers?" She looked up at him.

"So many questions," he looked down at her, "just go with the flow."

A slot in the door opened above their heads making both of them look up. A single, giant green eye stared down at them.

"Who are thee?" The eyeball said. Skylar couldn't help but shiver.

"Children of Nature." Matt said, no emotion in his voice.

The eye fixed itself on Skylar and then looked back at Matt, "She's a daughter of Nature?" A loud sound of breathing through a nose came, "She doesn't smell like a Child of Nature."

"I can assure you she is." Matt said, but he glanced at her quizzically.

"I need identification." Said the eyeball.

Skylar looked at Matt and he looked down at her. She gave him a puzzled expression. He pulled down the sleeve of her jacket, revealing the bite.

The eye seemed to widen in surprise, then looked to Matt, "Son of Nature?"

Matt glared at the eyeball before he lifted the base of his shirt, revealing a jagged scar on his side. It was healed messy, and white, not smooth and almost invisible like hers.

"Oh my gosh!" Her hands flew to his scar and touched it, it was hard against her fingers. He brushed her hands away and dropped his shirt.

"There's your identification." He said to the eyeball. He ignored Skylar's look of concern, facing the eye, not even glancing in her direction.

The eye disappeared in the slot above. Skylar could hear the muffled sliding of locks.

"Michael Rollins." She said quietly.

"What?"

"Michael Rollins, he's your sire, right?"

"How do you..?"

"Your bite, I looked at it and I got a name." She looked up to find him staring at her intently with his bright green eyes.

"Well, you're close." He said giving her a look she had never seen on him, unsure what to make of it, "I don't have a sire."

"How's that possible?"

He thought for a moment, "A sire is someone who injected you with the infection and blooded you. I was injected with the infection and was left to die." Skylar wanted to hold him close to her body, when she heard him say that. She wanted to let him know everything was alright. "Mike blooded me."

The sound of sliding locks fell silent and the large steel door opened. Matt led her through the pair of steal doors, pressing a hand against her lower back. There was no sign of the giant eyeball that had questioned them at outside. They stepped into a dimly lit room filled with what looked like hundreds of people, some dancing, some smoking terrible scents, and some gambling, but all were drinking.

"Where are we?" She looked up at Matt.

He grinned at a small brunette with crystal like eyes and sharp pointy ears. Skylar couldn't help but feel a twinge of hatred towards this girl.

"Tenebrarum Stipes." He looked at a blonde girl, with light blue skin, and sparkly black eyes like black diamonds cut to perfection. She looked back at him, he winked at her, and her cheeks flushed to a dark purple color.

"And what does that mean?" She could feel her cheeks burn, she turned away, breathing deep to calm her heart rate.

"It's Latin, for The Dark Club." He grinned down at the back of her head.

"Dark?" Before Skylar could turn back to look at Matt, she felt herself being pulled away from him. A blue tentacle arm was wrapped around her waist, pulling her towards it's owner. A blue man with one large, brown eye in the middle of his forehead, his skin was slimy or sweaty, and his ears were filled with gages.

He pressed his hips against hers, without releasing her, and began circling them around. Skylar looked to find three other girls, they all looked normal, wrapped in a tentacle arm each dancing with his body. They didn't act normal, they looked at him almost mesmerized, like they were put into a trance.

"Come on." He hissed in her ear. She felt the sharp tip of his tongue brush her earlobe. "Don't fight it, you know you want to."

She looked into his eye, which wasn't brown anymore, but was a piercing blue almost white. A chill shot down her spine, everything inside of her told her to get away.

"Darling, let loose, have some fun." He buried his head into her neck and chewed on her skin with sharp, razor-like teeth. Skylar looked at the other girls, their eyes were the scary blue his were and their necks smeared with blood.

Her eyes burned, not with tears, but with something different and her head throbbed making her thought process foggy and unclear. She raised a clawed hand before digging it into the tentacle around her waist and sliding it deep into his flesh. A frothy, white blood poured from his skin onto the floor, smoking when it hit the ground.

He released her silently, moving away from her and moving onto his next victim. He pulled a girl towards him with soft, brown hair pressing her to his leg. She looked at him, willingly, before he started nipping at her neck. Her brown eyes turned to the piercing blue color and she moved against him with such a wolf force you'd believe they were the only two people in the room.

Skylar turned away, hoping to find Matt behind her, only to find a burley dark man with giant muscles for arms. "I'm sorry." She said sliding past him.

"Where are you going?"

"What?"

He turned away from her and walked deeper into the mass of dancers.

"Okay?" Skylar turned around and started walking to find Matt. Until she froze, incapable of moving her body. She tried to lift her arm, but it disobeyed her, staying close to her side. "What the hell?"

Her body turned around, against her will, and followed after the burley man. "Matt!" She called trying to stop herself, "Matt!" Her voice was smothered under the sound of the music, until she couldn't hear her own voice anymore.

Her body stopped moving, she stood in the middle of the room, next to what seemed like hundreds of other people. She tried to move, but her body stood frozen. She looked at the others, hoping someone would help, but everyone else stood frozen, the music had stopped, and the lights dimmed.

'What the...' She thought, since she couldn't speak.

A flash of light and the music boomed loud in her ears, everybody moved, each in a different pose before freezing. Another flash of light and the music boomed, everyone moved again. Last flash and boom and then everyone was moving, not just random movements, but all in sync, she found her own body moving in sync with everyone else.

Skylar recognized these movements, she knew exactly what came next and exactly what everyone was doing. She executed each movement perfectly, without any effort. She spun into a man, like every girl did, and they spun around the floor together. She had always thought an elegant dance could easily be turned into a hot, sexy dance if you changed the music from classical to pop.

She spun away from him, to her final partner. This man felt familiar to her, him body was warm and she could feel his abs through his shirt. She looked up to find Matt staring at her with his yellow/green eyes. He gave her crooked smile before dipping her down into the final pose.

They held it for several seconds before the next song came on. He tilted her back onto her feet, and she shuffled around unsure what to do or say.

"Dark because we are the dark people." Matt said to her.

She gave him a puzzled look.

"Vampires, werewolves, shifters, and witches we're all darkness." He said.

Skylar breathed heavily, looking around at everybody else who was dancing like nothing weird had happened. "What the hell was that?" She asked, putting her hands on her knees and ducking her head down, trying hard to think.

"All your questions will soon be answered."

"Why do you keep saying that?" She said, looking up at him. He replied with an unimpressed expression. Skylar rolled her eyes and ducked her head back down, "I need to think."

"Okay, then let's go back to my place. You can think there." He put his hand on her back, trying to soothe her.

"No, there's only one place I can clear my head, only one place I can think."

"Where's that?"

Skylar stood up, using Matt's shoulder for support. Her head felt foggy and every muscle in her body felt tired. "Arlington National Cemetery."

~~~

Skylar knelt down in the grass, which was slightly damp and soaked into her jeans. The air around them was light and misty, making her feel isolated. She laid down the bouquet of orange roses at the base of the grave.

'You were the best.' She thought. 'You could do anything in the world. You knew how to make me happy, how to make me laugh, you even stood by my side when nobody else would.' She felt the tears run down her face, she didn't bother to wipe them away. 'You died fighting for your country, your family. You were too young. You were my best friend.'

She put her hand on the headstone, tracing the letters of his name with her thumb. Christopher Jacob Fowler. "I love you." She said out loud, "And I miss you."

Matt knelt down beside her, pulling her body into his. She let him cradle her while she cried into him. "He died for his country." He said, looking at the description on the stone.

She nodded. Skylar couldn't speak, she couldn't bring herself to even experience that pain.

Matt waited for her cries to soften and for her breathing to settle. "Why the orange flowers?"

Skylar sat up, looking at the flowers. Her hair fell in her face, she didn't move it out of the way. "Orange was his favorite color, actually it's both of our favorite colors. Every dance recital, every gymnastics competition, he'd give me a bouquet of orange roses. So, every time I come here, I bring him the same gift he brought me."

Matt rubbed her shoulders with his hand. His warmth soothed her slightly. She wanted him to comfort her more, pull her body into his and just hold her forever.

"I feel like I'm in a dream." She said, staring at the orange flowers in a daze, "Like I feel like I'm awake, but I can't control anything that's going on, that I can't move. Like everything I'm doing is a hopeless attempt, that I'm going to wake up and none of this will be real."

Matt shuffled uncomfortably next to her. She could feel his hand tense against her back.

Skylar looked up at him, warm tears ran down her face. He refused to look her in the eyes. "Matt." She felt her throat thicken. "Matt."

"All your answers will be answered very soon."

"Why do you keep saying that?" Her throat closed, she used the cool tombstone as a support.

"I want to show you something." He picked her up off the ground and helped walk her away. Holding her up with his own body.

"Where are we going!" She said tiredly, her head dropped down then lifted. Skylar was emotionally and physically drained.

"Lapis Defunctorum." He said, not translating to English for her.

"Is that Latin?" She asked, slightly annoyed.

"Yep."

"Why is the supernatural always in Latin?" She asked dipping her head down tiredly, "Why can't the ancient language be in French or German or a language that isn't dead?"

"Well, technically, it wasn't a dead language when our race was created." He flashed her a sly smile.

"You didn't have to answer, a simple 'I don't know Kiddo' would've been just fine." She said giving him a grimace.

"Sorry, Kiddo, I don't roll that way." He stopped walking and let go of her, slowly, making sure she didn't collapse on the ground before he let her stand alone. "We're here."

Skylar looked around, shuffling her feet against the hard pavement, seeing only grass. "What are we looking at?" Matt pointed up to the top of a grassy hill, where three large tombstones stood. "Why are we at the bottom of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers?"

"That's where Lapis Defunctorum is." He said smiling up at the stones.

"And that means."

"The Stone of the Dead."

"Well, that's pleasant." She said jokingly.

"You don't see the dead," he said, staring up at the large stones. Skylar could make out the tiny grains in the gray cement. "You can see the date of your death."

"But, we're immortal, we can't die."

"There's always a way to kill a person." Matt said, taking his eyes off the tombs and looking down at her. "A wooden stake through the heart kills a vampire, silver is like kryptonyte to werewolves, witches, well witches are practically human, they die to almost anything."

"What about shifters?"

"Shifters are a very rare species," he said, "I never understood the reasoning behind it."

"Behind what?"

"Diamonds, shifters are killed by diamond daggers or any blade made out of a diamond."

"What?" Skylar fell down laughing, she couldn't help it. "You've got to be kidding!"

"Nope, you will never see a shifter wear diamonds because they cut his or her skin. But we can also die from poison or just having our hearts ripped out of our chests." Skylar gulped, she didn't want to face a death like that, or any death really. "Look at the middle stone and tell me what you see."

She obeyed what Matt told her to do. When she saw what was written on the stone she gasped in shock. "My name!"

Matt nodded, "I see my name, Matthew Nicholas Chase. Born on January eighth, nineteen sixty five."

Skylar looked at him in shock, "You're forty-nine years old?" He nodded in response, "We'll, you look good for your age, I guess." She saw him smirk before she turned back to the stone. "Skylar Elizabeth Fowler, born July twenty-nine, nineteen ninety-seven. What's the rest of yours say?"

"I don't have an end date yet, the Fates haven't decided yet, my death is blank." She looked up at Matt, then back to the stone. It had an end date, an actual date for when she was going to die. She collapsed on the ground. Matt caught right before her head smacked the pavement. "What does it say?"

"Died," hot tears ran down her face, her vision blurred and darkened, "July twenty-eighth two-thousand fourteen." She looked up at Matt, his golden figure sparkled as her vision darkened. "I'm going to die in three days."