zg_shadows | Journey's End

Here's the final Nikki story. That I think covers The Pearly Lady's motivations, and what was really going on in those other stories I wrote. Though I think if you went back and read them again, in the light of those last events things would be pretty obvious.

As I've said I've no plans to bring her back as a PC. She may return as an NPC in the future, but in a very different way. Which is hinted at, at the end of the story. The hints have, for the record, been cleared with STs. :)

Journey's End

Evil.
She had never wanted to be evil.
And in the beginning she wasn't. In the beginning, not a single evil thought would have crossed her mind.

The snow had bitten at her skin that day, over six hundred years ago, as she stepped into the small Romanian town. Three months of walking without rest had taken away everything she had and now this little settlement on the outskirts of Cluj was her journeys end. Exhausted and with no will to continue, she collapsed into the snowy path.
It seemed however luck or destiny or some such force had her eye on her that day, for no sooner then her face hit the ground but a tall strong man came running out to her, and although she didn't understand anything he said, he wrapped her in a blanket, fed her warm broth and allowed her to stay with him, his wife and their son. Nicolae.

Her relationship with Nicolae should never have ended the way it did. When she was human she loved him as if the boy she nannied was her own son. After he Embrace she still loved him, first as her son, then as her child, and after he rescued her from her sire's castle, as her lover. But things had changed, this 'brother' of his, Fink, that he kept talking about and that he seemed to long to return to to help fight with this group, The Sabbat, seemed to occupy him after they escaped Romania for the recently colonised Africa and she could already tell he was falling out of love with her. In a need to further their own survival and in bitterness at his choices and feelings she had taken a new lover, but he too had betrayed her, siring a lover of his own and naming her 'The Dark Pearl' was his final insult to her.

For hundreds of years, as she grew in hatred, as her heart became colder and colder, and as she ran rampage across Europe slaying every vampire she came across, she would blame her fall from humanity and goodness on the men that had betrayed her. Love had failed her. Only power was worth anything in this world. And her appetite for power grew until in knew no end. Nothing short of godhood would satisfy her.

Killing Nikki had perhaps been the beginning of her fall. It was only six years after she had returned from space. In the metal prison Nikki and her allies had built for her, her rage was understandable she thought to herself, and killing Nikki had been on her mind for so long. But it was after she had slayed her Childe, and stealing his identity, that first bubble of something strange inside her began to grow.

She had always planned on killing Fink shortly after she arrived in London. The corrupter of her Childe, he deserved to die. Yet she told herself that he could be useful, that he and his pack could serve her and so should be allowed to live for a while. Yet as she got more and more into the identity of her son, stag in elaborate ghoul rants, designed to be overheard, and having ghouls fleshcrafted to look like her attack her in America, further cementing the idea in those around her that she must be who she pretended to be, that strange bubble seemed to grow larger. Perhaps it was just the viniculum that did it – but yet, there was no need for her to act the way she did. Risking her life to save Fink's on the boat, and not using the opportunity to destroy him, was there more than just shared blood at work there?

Revealing herself to Carla had been her greatest mistake. She had no assurance that Carla would keep her secrets, and there had been no reason for her to do it. But in Carla, she had glimpsed something that had somehow touched her. In Carla, she had seen something of herself herself, when she was younger, when she still had a chance, when she wasn't the hollow and twisted Pearly Lady, but the sweet young woman from Winchester who's name had long been lost to time. She told herself her attempts to control Carla were of course for safety, she needed to exert her power to stop her revealing her identity and weakness. Perhaps though, she came to think in her last nights, I had been that strange maternal instinct she'd found for Nicolae returning, in a strange twisted form. She didn't want to see Carla make the same mistakes she did, in the end that was what she told herself at least, and what lead to her single most altruistic action in centuries.

The deal she had made with the Daemon, had been what sealed her fate, she had known when Carla suggested it, it was absurd. Why would she have waited patiently for so long to rush into an infernal pact. Yet that driving obsession of hers for power, that need to feel like a goddess burned inside her and made her take it. And it was then shortly afterwards, that she understood the feeling. The bubble that had been growing.

She was feeling regret.

Regret, possibly had been what she had felt all along, what had really driven her all those years ago. Regret for what she and Nicolae could have achieved, of what she could have become, of what her life might had been if she'd never left her home in the fifteenth century in the first place. And now regret for losing the last thing she really had. She continued to try to delude herself that it was all a step to godhood, but she knew it to be a lie now, how could you ever be a goddess when you served a higher power. A power that had your soul and could never be appeased. When Brant had discovered her she had almost felt like crying, as if such things could have been possible, and as the Palla Grande approached she was beginning to cave into true despair.

The werewolf had warned her before the event that her name was marked, she had told him as if trying to convince herself that they were expecting her because of the set up she'd made with the childe she'd made, the attempt she would make to fake her death to escape. She knew the truth though. She knew she was going to her death, and that was when she had done it. She had Carla's soul, given to her by her infernal masters, and she released the revenant from her debt. Telling her only to “Treat her child better then I treated mine.”

And now it was over. She hadn't seen it being so sudden. She had no idea her death would occur within a minute of her arriving at the Mansion. She'd died, killed by Fink, the man she had hated for so long, but forgave with her last breath.

But this wasn't right.

This wasn't what was meant to happen?

She had sold her soul, hadn't she? Wasn't she meant to find herself surrounded by fire and pain for all eternity? Eternal damnation. That was what was meant to await her.

Not this.

That single action she made for Carla, was never enough to save her. She couldn't possibly have been redeemed. Yet there was no fire, no brimstone, no daemons tearing her apart over and over. Just this one image in front of her, drawing slowly closer. How long till she reached it. Months? Years? She couldn't tell. And what happened when she did?

She had plenty of time it seemed to work out what she had done to bring this about. Something buried in her past perhaps? Some unforeseen network of destiny and fate? Whatever it was, she would understand.

Somehow she would understand. What had really lead her here. And what this image meant.

This single, shining, perfect, crescent moon.