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gaiuskamilah · 2 months

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hide me in thy wounds bloodbound | T | 2.1k words | gaius augustine/main character

first chapter in a two-chapter story. written for @choicesfebruary2024 / agape: your character's relationship with a greater being.

[next chapter] [read on ao3]

chapter i: sanctify me

Late in the first month of a year that was well into his third millennium alive, Gaius Augustine stepped into the Musea Sanguis for the first time in decades.

He hadn’t returned to the underground museum since he’d left the Onyx Sarcophagus for good. Back then, Gaius was hellbent on taking back his kingdom, enacting revenge on his traitorous court, and finally ruling over all life on the planet. It was a good few weeks before he spent a few more as a tree and then the few days after that getting the very foundations his life was built on burned to the ground.

Needless to say, the few decades after that were spent outside of New York, the place he once called home.

“Can I help you, sir?”

Gaius turned his head and was met by a short, plump young man with brown skin and a mop of black hair. From his scent Gaius could tell that the man was a vampire. He gave Gaius a curious look, as if trying to place where he had seen Gaius before.

“I’m visiting,” was Gaius’ response. “I assume you’re the new keeper of the library?”

The man’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “I’ve been the keeper of the library for the past five years now, sir,” he said. “Are you a vampire? I’ll have to check for your brand.”

Gaius raised an eyebrow. In all his little adventures in the past decades, he hardly expected people to recognize him. But in New York? By the keeper of the Musea Sanguis? That was odd, if not entirely showing that the younger vampire was unfit for his position.

“The last time I was here was decades ago. The librarian was a different man,” said Gaius. “And no, no brand.”

“No brand?” the keeper asked, a bit of surprise in his voice. “Do you know your maker? It’s protocol to—”

“No brand,” interrupted Gaius, more firmly this time. “No brand, and I don’t need it, and my Maker thought I didn’t either.”

–

Gaius left the young librarian to his tasks and walked into the library proper. He ignored the librarian’s protests, and behind him Gaius could hear the younger vampire scramble across his desk.

The Musea Sanguis looked considerably different compared to when Gaius last saw it. Numerous artifacts were no longer on display in the museum, no doubt transferred to a more public setting after vampires were revealed to the world. Attila the Hun’s sword was no longer on display, and neither was the blade that was used to execute Marie Antoinette. On the other hand, there were new additions that even Gaius wasn’t familiar with. New tomes, cups, paintings, and other priceless items were now on display. Gaius examined these with a passing interest.

He wasn’t at the Musea for them.

He turned past another aisle of bookshelves. Even with the renovations and new additions, Gaius knew the Musea like the back of his hand. And if he was correct, the display he was looking for should still be where it was last left.

True to his hunch, it was still where he last left it. The Onyx Sarcophagus. His Onyx Sarcophagus.

The damned thing was now bound by red line ropes and had an additional display on the side describing it. The short description, of course, just had to include a sentence or two about his century trapped in the box.

“Feeling nostalgic?”

Gaius flinched with surprise. He knew that coming to New York meant a higher possibility of running into them, but…

“Magdalene. Good evening,” said Gaius with a composed voice. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“That’s my line, since the Musea is under my authority now and you’re the one visiting. You gave poor Ben a fright and he ended up calling me in a rush,” said Magdalene. She continued in a high-pitched tone: “‘Miss Magdalene, there’s an unbranded vampire at the library! He’s tall and looks scary!’”

Gaius, despite himself, gave an amused huff. “My apologies, then,” said Gaius. He finally turned to face Magdalene. She was dressed in a long-sleeved, knee-length blue dress. Her long black hair was loose and her fringe sat just on top of her eyebrows. “I’ve had no need for a brand for the longest time on account of… her. And I promise, I’m only visiting.”

“No new evil schemes?”

“None that I can dream of.”

Magdalene shrugged, then gave him a small smile. If his heart lurched just the slightest bit at that, that was no one’s business. “Alright then, Augustine,” she said, walking up next to him. “I hope you weren’t planning on ruining my display, though. That would be an evil scheme.”

“Well, I thought the library was still under Raines, but the circumstances seem to have changed…”

“Hey!”

“I only jest, Maria, don’t worry,” said Gaius. “I don’t plan on destroying this coffin anytime soon. I’m only visiting.”

Silence draped itself between the two of them, broken when Magdalene said more to herself than to him: “Maria.” She pursed her lips and absent-mindedly played with the small golden cross hanging on her neck. After a moment, she turned to him. “How long have you been in New York?”

“I arrived here yesterday evening. Just wanted to see the sights, maybe go a trip down memory lane…” answered Gaius. “I was planning on visiting just one more place before I leave New York. Unless you’ve decided my presence is so horrible that I have to evacuate now?”

“Your words, not mine. I’ve said no such thing. In fact, I may… say otherwise, even,” said Magdalene. After a beat, she said what was probably his biggest surprise of the decade: “I’ll go with you.”

“What?”

“I’ll go with you,” repeated Magdalene. “To wherever it is you’re heading to. Who knows? I might find out something new about New York. You’re older than dirt, and I think it’ll be interesting.”

Gaius swallowed, almost at a loss for words. He breathed out, then said: “I’ll… I’ll be visiting the temple.”

The look of surprise on Magdalene’s face rivaled his. She averted her eyes, then turned back to him. “I see,” was her reply. “You’re not planning on restarting First Vampire-ism or whatever in New York, are you?”

Gaius let out a bleak laugh. “No evil schemes like that just yet.”

–

Gaius pushed open the ornate doors of the Temple of the First. The temple was a shell of its former self, even more so than it was years ago. Weeds and plants broke through the stone foundations as the earth slowly reclaimed the abandoned temple. What was likely years’ worth of dust and blood covered the floor. As Gaius’ eyes adjusted to the almost absolute darkness, he could make out the cracks in the beams. Old craters in the walls, evidence of battles past, remained untouched.

Magdalene followed behind him as he walked. “I only ever come here once a year, on Jax’s death anniversary,” said Magdalene. “It feels… strange to be here.”

“It is indeed,” said Gaius. With a conjured flame in his palm, Gaius lit the archaic torches on the sides of the room. The room was bathed in a dim but warm glow.

“So…” started Magdalene. “Any particular reason you wanted to come here, specifically? I wouldn’t have expected you to come here, of all places, with what you said about…”

Magdalene trailed off and instead motioned to the front of the temple, where behind the altar and the decimated throne was a large stone statue embedded onto the wall.

Goddess.

The word rang in Gaius’ head on instinct, and with it a feeling of loathing and shame. He sighed, and after a moment, said: “Ever since you let me live, I’ve felt… aimless. Less so than I felt on the boat all those years ago, but still aimless,” confessed Gaius. “Even when Xenocrates imprisoned her and left me, I wasn’t alone. I had her will to guide me. I don’t… have that anymore.”

“It was terrible, and what she did was terrible, but for the longest time it was all I knew.” Gaius sighed. “And it makes me miss her.”

Magdalene’s eyebrows rose, but the revelation didn’t seem to surprise her as much as Gaius expected. “You do?”

“I do. She violated me, took over my life, and I did terrible things in her name. Things that make me feel disgusting,” said Gaius. “But it was still me, and also her. I don’t know where she ended and where I started. It was broken from the moment Iola was taken and I know it but some part of me… still won’t let it go.”

He slowly walked towards the altar; Magdalene again followed behind him. Centuries ago, he would have knelt by the altar, placed his lips on the table, and sent out a prayer to The First. Now, he merely stood and swiped a finger on the layer of dust that coated it.

He walked to the base of the statue and conjured a flame in his palm again. He motioned for Magdalene to come forward and she walked to him, a curious expression on her face. “You said you wanted to learn something new about New York. Here’s what I have for you,” said Gaius. He held the flame to light an inscription on the statue. “This is the first prayer The First taught me. I learned it at her knee, in a now dead language, when she first taught Xenocrates and I how to pray.”

Magdalene’s fingers traced over the ancient letters. “What does it say?” she asked.

Gaius paused for a moment, then in a language he hadn’t needed spoken in thousands of years, recited: “Blessed be the Goddess Phampira, and Her holy Tree of Life, from which eternity springs. Blessed be the Priestess Rheya, the First Vampire, Phampira made flesh, rightful Goddess and Queen of Mydeia,” He hesitated, the continued reading the prayer that once came to him as easy as breathing, “We pray for prosperity, for the life Her blood brings. We pray for Her hands, Her Prince and Her Soldier, Her will and Her blade, wholly Hers to work in Her name, forever and ever. Let it be so.”

When he finished reading, he half-expected the First herself to come back from the dead and smite him down for all his traitorous acts in the past years. But instead, nothing happened, and Gaius was met only with Magdalene’s stunned look.

“I… I understood every bit of that,” said Magdalene. “Rheya, she… do you really think she was a goddess?”

“I did. We all did. She had defied death itself and returned with what we viewed as Phampira’s blessing. Phampira made flesh,” said Gaius. “But I’ve had time. I’ve had time to think about it. I’ve had time to think about whether the gods are real and if they’ll save me, like I believed the First would. Now I’m starting to think that was just how we made sense of things. Maybe we — She — stumbled on the tree, something She, as a priestess, didn’t fully understand yet, and said it how She believed it to be.”

A moment of silence passed between them. Gaius said: “Then there’s the question of you, Magdalene.”

Magdalene let out a breath. “I know,” she said. “You saw what happened when I killed her. Her power… it became part of me. And for a few moments, I felt like I could do anything. There was so much rage and grief when Jax was lost and I felt like I could undo it all. I could make the world a better place. I could make it my world where no one had to suffer. I understood then, why people called her a goddess. But…”

Magdalene paused, pondering on her words. Finally, she said: “But it wasn’t enough. It was never going to be enough,” she said. “And when I finally let Adrian, Kamilah, and Lily drag me down from that high, I knew that I was not God.”

Magdalene sighed and sank down to sit on the temple floor. She leaned her head back onto the wall and closed her eyes. After a moment’s hesitation, Gaius sat down next to her.

“I hardly visit this temple because it brings up questions I try not to think about. Was Rheya God? Am I God? At one point, maybe I could have been. Rheya’s blood is mine, and mine hers. Where does she start and where do I end? It horrifies me sometimes, the harm I can do.” Magdalene held onto the cross on her neck. She turned to face him, and Gaius was struck by the intensity in her brown eyes. “I don’t think Rheya was God. You won’t find God in me, either. I don’t even know if God exists anymore. Maybe God was gone all along.”

“Maria…”

“No, not Maria. My name is Magdalene,” she corrected. “I live and I love and my power has limits and that was how I knew I wasn’t God. I’m not alone, and neither are you.”

#playchoices #choices #bloodbound #choicesmonthlychallenge #choicesfebruarychallenge #agape #gaius augustine #gaius augustine x mc #gaius x mc #gaius x magdalene #magdalene constantino #my writing

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