Blood Moon [a Twilight Saga FanFiction]

Mary Alice Brandon Part 2

AN INCIDENT HAPPENED AT THE HOSPITAL, so I wasn't able to visit the asylum for a few weeks after I had finished the portrait. I also had to hunt... and handle the many men complaining that they didn't want to be treated by a female doctor.
One evening, a more forceful man decided that he wanted to take advantage of my duty of care to him. He had stared me in the eye and stated that my having sex with him and letting him touch me would cure his ailment. He then proceeded to reach under my dress.
I nearly broke his hand, and probably put myself at risk of a visit from the Volturi. I told my boss that I was only going to treat women and children. I was not going to take no for an answer.
I left before he even had the chance to argue.
It was that following weekend that I left for the asylum once more, to give Mary her gift, and to ask Igor to help me clean up my near reveal.
It was actually the first thing we talked about after he greeted me at the door. He seemed to get somewhat agitated, hearing that a man had tried to take advantage of me.
'Tried, being the leading word there, Igor.' I chuckled at him.
He sighed, trying to centre himself.
'You're lucky that the town is nearby. If he starts crying vampire, send him my way. I'll take care of him,' Igor said with his smirk.
'Why am I not surprised that you'd offer that?' I asked with a giggle, and we continued walking towards Mary's cell. 'I hope you've been focusing on your other clients, as well, Igor.'
He didn't answer, only chuckled guiltily as we walked passed a gentleman groaning on the floor.
'At least they're not dying of starvation,' he counteracted in a joking manner. It made me roll my eyes at him. 'And Miss Elizabeth, you know I can't go out there and get rid of that human for you now.'
'I know it's too soon. I'll keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn't talk. And if he does...'
'Send him my way.'
'Send him your way.'
He nodded before opening Mary's door, she instantly skipped up to us with a smile on her lips and a tear in her eyes.
'It's beautiful, Ma'am. Thank you,' she said through hiccup sobs.
Before handing her the portrait, I wiped the tears from her cheeks.
'Do you remember them?' I asked her as she uncurled it. She nodded in response.
'It's my Momma and little sister,' she said and laughed weakly, 'and that. That's nine-year-old me.' She looked up at me, still sniffing. 'Thank you. Thank you so much!'
She softly put the portrait down on her bed before she hurled herself against me, throwing her arms around my waist. I was slower to hug her back and let her cry as Igor walked passed us to look at it.
'This art is beautiful, Miss Elizabeth,' he said. 'You really do have a gift.'
'Or over two-hundred years of occasional boredom,' I responded, making him chuckle.
Igor left Mary and me in her room. He said it was to work, so I listened to see what it was he did. I listened as his steps walked to the kitchens and smiled as he began getting food, ready for all the inmates.
'Does the past ever bother you?' Mary asked once she had finished crying. She was still holding me, though.
What an odd question, 'does the future ever bother you?' I responded with.
She let go, smiled at me and walked over to her new portrait.
'Sometimes. Especially when I try to change it, and it either gets worse or doesn't change at all. I think that's when it bothers me the most,' she admitted, and her fingers brushed softly over her mother's painted face. 'When there's nothing that I can do about it.'
'I think,' I sat on her provided cell table. 'The only time the past has ever bothered me. Is when I can't make any sense of it.'
'I imagine that wouldn't happen very often,' Mary said with a smile.
'At least once a century,' I admitted. 'It's when I look at someone's past, and there's something about it, that isn't clear.'
'Like a blind spot? Like how I can't see vampires clearly?'
'I suppose. Maybe. It's only moments in their pasts where it all just becomes a haze and leaves a big block of, something. And it's always after a moment like that the person has changed character, it's like they became a completely different person in the span of, however long the emptiness is.'
'So, you're used to knowing, what's made a person who they are.' It wasn't a question, at least it wasn't worded as one, but she looked at me as if expecting me to respond.
'Yes. But you, Mary Brandon, see who they are to become, and you need to acknowledge that you can't always control that. The Lord gave us free will for a reason, and nobody can control what we do with it. Others can try to play with a puzzle that isn't their own, but the only one who can truly control who they become or what they do is themselves.'
'We're not talking about controlling the future anymore, are we?' she guessed and looked back to the portrait.
'No, we're not,' I responded. 'Do you know what I'm talking about?'
'I think so,' she said. 'But I don't want to look, I still have a headache from last time.'
'You couldn't have stopped her death, Mary.'
'Don't.'
'You need to hear it, and not from someone who's being paid by your family to say certain things to you against his will. There was nothing you could have done to stop it, not trying harder, not walking with her. Even if she had decided to take a different path, eventually it would have happened. Maybe not that night, maybe not even that year, but eventually, it would have happened and no matter when it never would have been your fault.'
'But I saw it,' said through a lump in her throat, her heart racing. 'I saw them kill her!'
'And she believed you for the longest time. Probably right until the end. Don't carry that guilt with you, Mary, it doesn't belong to you.'
'I wish I could forget,' she said and began to cry. 'Just like everything else that disappears with this stupid treatment, I wish I could forget that.'
'There are some things in our lives that stick with us, no matter what we go through. But guilt, Mary, the guilt that truly belongs to your father, let it go. You cannot control every second of the future, that is not in your hands. Let that guilt go, Mary, and you can finally be free.'
She hiccupped in her sob, and for some reason, it gave me a sudden idea. It was a thought I had never had before, but I had begun feeling a little protective over Mary, so I found myself grinning at the idea.
If I could make her father and his new wife feel even the smallest shadow of the guilt Mary feels... perhaps, go so far as to even drive him insane with it...
Mary's heart slowed, her body went cold under my hand as her skin paled. A vision.
'Mary?' I brushed her short hair and made her turn to me. 'Can you talk to me? What are you seeing?'
Slowly, she began smiling.
'Thank you,' she said in such a whispy voice I grew more worried about her health with these visions. 'Thank you.'
She blinked and her colour and heart returned to normal.
She saw me "haunting" her father.
'Does it work?' I asked her.
'Enough,' she said with a smile, stood and moved the portrait from her bed to the table.
I watched from behind her as she brushed her fingers over her mother and sister once more before tilting her head up and whispering, "let it go". She then had a deep sigh and turned to smile at me.
'It was lovely seeing you again, Lizzy,' she said. 'I can't wait to see you next time.'
'Until next time, Miss Brandon.'
I left her room and met with Igor as he handed out dinners.
'So, what are you going to do?' he asked me, raising a brow a the same moment an inmate pounced on his dinner like an animal.
'Make some portraits of her mother, put them in spots her father finds them. Make him pay.'
'I don't think I've ever seen you this dark before, Miss Elizabeth,' he said with a grin.
'Afraid?' I asked him, leaning on his desk and watching him.
'Slightly,' he said and chuckled nervously. I could hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes and smile. My darkness made him feel something else he was suppressing for my own sake.
'Well, I better get to work. Want to join me make a human man go insane with guilt?' I invited.
'As tempting as that is, Miss Elizabeth,' Igor said. 'Mary saw James getting closer before you arrived here today. She doesn't know quite when he will be here, but knows that he's close enough to smell you.'
The tracker was close? It made me second guess my plan.
'I can look after the town, Miss Elizabeth. I'll make sure your patient doesn't talk vampire and watch these precious souls here while James is around,' Igor told me. 'Go protect our Mary.'
'Our Mary?!' I repeated with a laugh. I sort of like the sound of that.
Igor laughed nervously. 'You know what I mean,' he said before his smile faded and he sighed. 'Go do what you have to do to make him pay. You know my past, Miss Elizabeth, I can handle myself in a fight.'
He most certainly can, I thought, pulling from his past, his centuries of training to fight under Stefan and Vladimir. Continuing to improve each and every vampire's method in a way that eventually, they could each take on two or three newborns, alone.
'I'll see you when I get back,' I said before leaving him once more.