Escape Chapter 2

[eiahmon]

Title: Escape
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I only wish I owned.
Summary: Instead of trying to grab the Ebony Stone after injuring Walter, Joachim runs for his life and makes it safely to Silvanus' territory, where the older vampire claims him as his own. How will Joachim's life be with a different master?

2.

I slept deeply for several hours, and when I woke, I couldn't feel Walter at all. I could however, feel my new master plainly, and the sense of calm I felt coming from his end of the bond was strangely soothing after years of Walter's mood swings. It was night out, and I had only the stars for light as I sat up in bed. I could see light coming around the closed bedroom door, and I could clearly hear Silvanus' heartbeat on the other side, so I quietly slipped out of bed and walked towards the door.

I eased the door open on hinges that squeaked just a little to see a small kitchen/ dining area. My new master was seated at the small table, nibbling on some kind of cracker, and he looked up at me. He smiled and beckoned me forward, and I hesitantly walked towards him. I really didn't know him at all, so I didn't know what to expect from him.

"Master," I murmured as I stopped in front of him, head bowed and eyes averted, as Walter had often demanded. I saw him stand up from the chair, and a second later, his fingers came under my chin and gently raised my head to look him in the eye.

His eyes were full of emotion as he looked at me. "You don't have to call me that, child. You may call me by my name. And never avert your eyes with me. You don't need my permission to look at me. I don't care what Walter made you do; the rules are different here."

I shivered slightly. "Rules?" I asked uneasily.

He gave me a gentle smile. "Nothing serious. I expect you to do as your told, and let me promise you that I will never treat you like Walter did. I have no servants here, so I expect you to pick up after yourself and keep your room clean. If I do give you an order, it's to keep your safe, so I expect obedience there. You are to stay out of my bedroom unless it is important. If you wake up during the day and need me, or if there is an emergency, you may go in and wake me, but otherwise you are to stay out of that room. I expect you to be respectful of others when we encounter them, even Walter, though I know that will be difficult for you. Just trust me to protect you, and you won't have any trouble there. I also expect you to be careful when hunting, so not to bring any trouble down on us."

"You're going to let me hunt for myself?" I was shocked. Walter hadn't allowed me out of the castle in years.

"Of course. You're old enough to feed yourself. I will feed you tonight, and then tomorrow I'll take you out and show you around my territory, so you know where to go. On that note, I also expect you to not wander off and stay within my borders unless I am with you. Do you understand me?"

I nodded slowly. "And if I...?" I hesitated, and Silvanus gave me an encouraging nod. "What happens if I disobey?"

"If you act like a disobedient child, then I will treat you like one." Silvanus replied. "That includes grounding you to your room to think on what you did wrong, extra chores, and if you do something serious, such as disobeying the laws or endangering your life, I will give you a whipping."

I whimpered, thinking of the time that Walter had given me a whipping and how he had taken special care to strike that sensitive area between my legs multiple times.

Silvanus frowned. "I will never hit you there, child. Never. I will never beat you, I will never torture you, tie you down, starve you, and I most certainly will never take you against your will. That is something that is be only given freely to those you care about, never to be forcefully taken." He drew me close and wrapped his arms around me, which prompted me to lie my head against his shoulder. "If I could, I would punish Walter harshly for hurting you in such a way, but he is independent of me and beyond my reach." He held me for a moment before he gently took me by the shoulders and pushed me away to look me in the eye. "Do you understand, child?"

I nodded slowly. The rules didn't seem so bad, though the "do as your told" part still worried me a little.

Silvanus gave me another gentle smile. "Then welcome home, Joachim." I looked at him for a moment, and then I leaned into his embrace as his arms came around me. "Everything will be all right."

The bond between us opened wide, and I could feel so many things from him: his care, concern, and worry, his anger at Walter for hurting me, and his relief that I was safe with him, out of Walter's reach.

I buried my face in his hair as relief made tears burn in my eyes, and soon I was crying in his arms again.

I felt him scoop me up and carry me out of the kitchen, and I felt him sit down somewhere. I didn't care though, I was too busy bawling on his shoulder, and I was dimly aware of him cooing to me and gently rocking me. When I finally raised my head and looked around with red and swollen eyes, I saw we were in a small living room, on a couch facing a fireplace. The kitchen was behind us, and the living room had three doors: one on the left wall that appeared to lead outside, one to the left of the fireplace, and the third on the right wall. I couldn't see where those other two doors went as they were closed.

"Feeling better?" Silvanus asked me, and I nodded and scrubbed at my eyes. He then eased me off his lap and stood up. "Let me show you the rest of the house then."

The door to the left of the fireplace actually led to a flight of narrow stairs that led up to the attic. I was expecting to see a typical attic space, cluttered with random objects and infested with squirrels and birds, so I found myself surprised at what I saw. Silvanus had turned the cavernous space into a library, and while it was small compared to Walter's library, it still took my breath away to look at it. Books were rare and expensive, so much so that even Walter had only a few, with his library mostly taken up by scrolls, yet this room was filled to the eaves with books. There were a few scrolls here and there, bound with ribbon and held in protective scroll cases, but the rest of the multitude of shelves were filled with books. Books of every size, with bindings of every color, books with their titles stamped on the spines with golden leaf, books with silver leaf, books with elaborate cover illustrations, books with nothing at all.

I heard Silvanus chuckle as I stared at the room in awe, and he came up behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders. "You are allowed in here at any time as long as you are careful. Many of these books are several hundred years old, and it is only preservation spells cast on them that keep them in good condition. The only books you are not allowed to touch are those over there -" He pointed to a locked glass fronted cabinet. "- because those books contain magic in one form or another. Even if you could use it, you still would be forbidden from reading those books, so stay away from them. If I catch you in them, it will be my strap across your backside. Am I understood?"

I nodded hastily, and I felt his approval through the bond. "Come now," he said as he ushered me down the stairs. He showed me his bedroom then, and it was a little larger than mine, but it was fairly plain, with only the bed, a wardrobe, and a writing desk. He also warned me again to stay out of that room unless it was important.

He then took me back into the living room, sat down on the couch, and pulled me down onto his lap. He let me drink from his neck as he whispered assurances that I would never go without while with him, but then, to my surprise, he sent me back to bed once I was finished.

"I'm not tired!" I protested, and he frowned at me. I ducked my head and flinched, bracing for the blow that was sure to come for disobeying.

"Look at me, Joachim." he said firmly but without any of the anger I had been expecting, and I whimpered quietly as I raised my head.

"I'm not going to hit you, child. Disagreeing with me is not enough to warrant punishment. I am sending you to bed because you are old enough to be up during the day and sleep at night, and because a tailor will be by tomorrow to measure you for new clothing. You are still tired from your run here after starving for two days, so you need to sleep so you can finish healing from that. Do you understand?"

I ducked my head again and nodded, and I turned and walked into my room without a word. Silvanus came after me, and I shivered at the implication. I kept silent as I hiked up the nightshirt that I was wearing, flopped down onto the bed face down, and spread my legs. I felt flickers of anger from him, but he only sighed.

"Close your legs child. I will never do that to you, ever." I felt him tug the nightshirt down to cover me. "It's been many centuries since I had a child. I simply wish to tuck you in."

I looked over my shoulder at him and blinked. He smiled sadly at me and stepped up to the bed as I rolled over onto my back. He pulled the blanket over me and tucked it around my shoulders.

"It saddens me," he said as he smoothed my hair back, "to see how Walter has taught you to act. I have not lain with anyone since my wives died hundreds of years ago, and even if I were inclined to touch you in such a way, I would not do it as a punishment or against your will. If you ever anger me enough to warrant punishment of any kind, I will walk away and not make any decisions until I have calmed down. I will never discipline you in anger, Joachim, and the worst you can ever expect to get from me is a whipping."

I curled up under the blanket and looked away from him. "If you... whip me, how will you go about it?" I was really hoping I could avoid that.

Silvanus gave me a wry smile. "That is for you to find out, if it ever comes to that. Just consider it incentive to stay out of trouble." He leaned over and kissed me on my forehead. "Now go to sleep. I will get you up in the morning before the tailor arrives."

I rolled onto my left side, facing Silvanus, and closed my eyes. He tucked the blanket around me, and I fell asleep to the soothing feel of him running his fingers through my hair.

******

As he said he would, he woke me in the morning just before the arrival of a tailor. I was measured and fitted, and then the man departed with promises to return with the finished work in a week or so. Not long after that, Kerwin arrived. He and I stared at each other for a moment, and then he ran up to me, and I threw myself into his arms with a sob. His arms came around me, and I buried my face in his shoulder and cried.

"I'm so glad.. so glad that you were able to get away from him." I heard him say as he ran his had over my hair. "I was so worried..." He scooped me up and carried me over to the couch, where he sat down with me on his lap. I clung to him and cried as he held me, and I don't know how much time had passed by the time I began to quiet. Silvanus was seated in an armchair nearby.

Kerwin eased me off of his lap and turned to Silvanus. "What happens now?"

"We go about our lives." Silvanus said simply in response. "Like we always have."

"What about Father?"

"I can't help him, Kerwin, if he does not wish it. As far as he is concerned, there is nothing wrong with him."

I looked back and forth between them, confused at the level of familiarity between them. I had known that they knew each other, of course, but they seemed to be much closer than I had ever expected.

Silvanus noticed my confusion and explained. "I have known Walter for many centuries, Joachim. He came to this area after the deaths of his parents, when he was too young to be on his own. I had just lost my entire family, so I took him in, and I thought about adopting him, but he refused. Instead I turned him to me to give him a measure of protection from his remaining family until he was old enough to look after himself."

"So... so Walter is your child?" I asked in a small voice as the implications of it all hit me. I felt Kerwin's arms give me a comforting squeeze.

Silvanus nodded. "Yes, he is, though he has been independent of me for over 600 years."

"And was he..." I swallowed thickly. "Was he like... this then?"

It was Kerwin who answered. "No little one, he wasn't. At one time, he was a kind, loving Father to me, and he was rarely angry and never violent unless someone had managed to truly enrage him."

"Like Dragos?" I asked quietly, and Kerwin flinched slightly.

"Yes," he sighed, "like Dragos."

I snuggled into Kerwin's side. "So why... Why did he do that to me?"

Silvanus moved from his chair to the couch beside me, and he reached out and smoothed a few strands of my hair out of my face. "The Ebony Stone," he said, "or more specifically, overuse of it. Long tern use of such power has long been known to erode the user's mind and impair their ability to think straight and make rational decisions, and Walter has been using it continuously for hundreds of years."

I looked at Kerwin. "Is that why you begged him to stop using it?"

"Yes." he replied with a nod. "I knew what it was doing to him."

"And there's nothing you can do?"

Silvanus sighed. "No, child, there isn't. Walter is on his own, and unless I'm willing to reclaim him – which he would never stand for – there's nothing to do but let him go."

I shivered at the thought of being under the same roof as Walter again and said nothing, and we sat in comfortable silence until Kerwin had to return home.

******

The following night, two days after he had brought me home, Silvanus used magic to create temporary clothing for me, and then he showed me to his hunting grounds – a cluster of small villages on the far western fridges of his territory. I still had a hard time believing that I was going to be allowed to hunt for myself, and I stared at the collection of huts and small houses for a long time before he gave me a gentle push from behind and urged me on.

It was a glorious feeling, being able to feed myself for the first time in decades, and I gave Silvanus a contented smile as we returned to the house. Once there, he made us tea and we spent a few minutes ni quiet we went to bed to sleep the rest of the night away. In the morning, produced the board and pieces for a game he called Latrunculi. We set up on the kitchen table, he explained the rules to me, and we spent a pleasant night in play. Silvanus was skilled at the game since he had been playing it for centuries upon centuries, and he defeated me soundly the first several times. He then spent time explaining tactics to me, since the game was essentially a war game, and I did much better my next round. I still could not come close to defeating him though.

When I managed to trap one of his pieces - alligatus – it was called, I flipped it upside down to show its state, and I realized then that I was actually enjoying myself. I paused and realized that I had a smile on my face – I hadn't smiled in years with Walter. I paused, and I saw Silvanus smile as the bond told him what I was feeling. I returned my attention to the game, and for the rest of the day, I seemed to be floating on air as I smiled and even laughed and took delight in seemingly everything. Even reading in the library (After checking that yes, I was allowed in there and wouldn't punished for touching the books.) without having to fear being attacked without warning was a wonder to behold after two centuries of Walter's cruelty.

Silvanus did not bother to act human, and for that reason, he did not eat meals on any regular basis. He did keep some things around, but because he enjoyed the taste and found the act of eating calming and relaxing. As the daylight hours waned, we shared a plate of cookies and more tea before it was time to ready for bed. He did not have a bathroom in his house, since he relied fully on his magic for such things, so he explained this me and told me what those spells would feel like, and then he used them on me.

I shivered at the sensation. It felt as though a bucket of cold water had been dumped over my head, followed by the feeling of soft cloths running over my skin, from head to toe. After it was done though, I felt like I'd just had a bath, and I sighed as Silvanus wound me in an embrace before he sent me to bed.

"Goodnight, little one." he whispered into my hair. I looked up at him and gave him a faint smile, before he released me to go to bed.

Chapter 1 -- Chapter 3
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