Marriage is Murder

Escobar finished his own meal and came back inside. He did still enjoy the smell of food, and he did occasionally eat, more for the sociability of it than for any need for it. He was amused by watching toddlers eating five star French cuisine and their vegetables with the same gusto that muggle children ate fast food and take out.

"If they eat this as every day foods, what will they impress their dates with?" Escobar asked, genuinely curious.

"Blame Khaat for that," Kate laughed. "She wants them to have the best. But, in answer to your question, if the kids are lucky, by the time they're dating, they might know how to cook some of it. At the very least, they'll know how to treat their dates well and how to treat them to good food and not conjured nonsense."

"Unless you teach them to conjure things rather impressively," Escobar said.

"All image and no substance," Edward said.

"It always worked for me," Escobar said.

"No," Brian said. "It didn't. And its what draws you back here."

"I am no threat to your wife," he said.

"No. I don't believe you are," Brian said. "Merely making a point. I'm merely stating that substance is more important than image."

"Perhaps," Escobar shrugged.

"You dont' want to admit that perhaps you're learning that," Kate said.

"If I am, I'm a slow learner," Escobar said. "But do consider tossing out a bit of food to your werewolf. It is going to be a full moon tonight, and until he learns some control, he should not be allowed to become any more out of control than he already believes he is."

Robert made no move to get up. It wasn't that Jack wasn't important. It was that he had to allow Jack to make his own choices about whether he wanted to be human or werewolf. And if he wanted to be human, then he needed to learn how to manage his illness and how to stay human rather than giving into the beast. If he didn't take care of his own needs and he transfigured either by choice or by accident, then that was Jack's own choice. Robert figured the wolfesbane would hold him, even if the stress made it difficult for him.

Robert noticed Brant making his own little study of Jack.  Robert, frankly, wasn't much interested. He had been treating Jack for several years, and he knew it wasn't the wolfsbane's fault. This was Jack. Jacks' own unresolved childhood issues with his brother, and the fact that his family encouraged him to be more rough than polished.  He had been encouraged to be violent rather than calm and restrained. So far, it hadn't cost him much, and Robert had been there to bail him out, time after time. Robert wasn't mindless of what Jack was struggling with. He had merely decided that the price was getting too high to allow Jack to continue to muddle through life and let others cover for him.

He wasn't sure what Brant expected to accomplish by taking extensive notes on Jack. Robert didn't want Jack being a case study.  He motioned Brant to close the notebook. Robert was on the same page with Jess. Jack knew what he needed to do, and he had spent years avoiding it.

Escobar noticed the nonverbal conversation going around the table tonight.

"Werewolf," Escobar said in a rather unemotional tone, "you need to stop running from your past and decide if you want to continue being who the people in your past tried to make you become.  Or whether you still want what you're so close to losing.  You can no longer do both.  The people who love you are not going to permit your current uncontrolled emotions over your past. Nor are they going to let you continue to do whatever you want whenever you want to--because to do so would be their approval of letting you kill everyone here and then some."

Escobar was not willing to let this go. He apparated out and then back in front of him. "I'm not finished," he said to him. "I do know about your past. I have studied those to which Khaat has entrusted her life. I've made it my business. Your dossier is not news.

"However, those of us who were purely human once and are no more what we were all carry a past with us. You are not the only one in the house with a tale of trauma. You are, though, the only one tonight who is wearing it on their sleeve.

"Your past might be the reason you carry the curse. But it is not fair to anyone around you for you to use it as an excuse of any kind. Why they've tolerated this from you this long, I do not know. I myself would have beaten the shit out of you years ago and knocked you into place.

"Understand this, though. So long as you decide to use your curse as the reason to feel sorry for yourself, I will not allow you around Khaat or her children," he said.

"I make no excuses for who I am or what I am. I am not a nice man, nor have I ever pretended to be so. I am a vampire. I prey upon people. I kill. I drink blood because I have to. It is what my curse forces me to do where I live. There are no wizarding hospitals where I live that simply dole out blood to vampires. I carry a curse as well, but never once in over 600 years have I ever asked or wanted anyone to do for me what you seem to want everyone here to do for you.

"If you want to be a werewolf, then go and do it. If you want to be a gentleman, then do it. The two cannot co-exist in the same body, though. You do not need to decide to night, so far as I am concerned. You will not, though, come near Khaat or her children until I know if they're safe to be near you. And I do not trust you right now."

"I do not know if he understood or not," Escobar said. "Time will tell. But, yes, I have been alive--more or less, for over 600 years. I was changed when I was a young man. It was a very different time then.

"I was young man who was deeply infatuated with an exotic beauty who had come with her father into our village. He was a shaman, and she was beyond anyone I had ever known. My father did try to warn me they were not as they seemed, but I chose not to listen. I had no idea it was her seductive charms as a vampire that attracted me to her. She promised me much, and she gave me little. Immortality, yes. But not at a cost that everyone would want to pay.

"I do understand him--more than he thinks. But if he thinks I will feel pity for him, then he is sadly mistaken. Pity condemns him even more. When we were human we wanted immortality. After we were no longer human, we grieved what we would never have again.

"Right now, he does not fight for you. He does not look to protect anyone--not the ones he loves, not the ones he is hired to protect. He's not even seeking to protect himself. What he desperately looks to do is to seek revenge on his brother for his curse. Until he resolves that, he is a dangerous liability to all of you.

"If you gamble on him as a fighter right now, you will be giving more to him than he is giving to anyone else, and you could be completely throwing your lives away. If I were still mortal, I'd be willing to put my trust in him when he demonstrated he was capable of earning it."

Upstairs, Khaat was becoming sharply restless. She didn't know how much more she was willing to lose.

"You're doing nothing but laying there letting this get to you," Marcus told her. "Not only is that dangerous for you, but its dangerous for me. It will make you want to do stupid things, and I'll have to chase you someplace to keep my job. Lets agree not to do that tonight, can we?"

"I can't lay here in this bed anymore," she sighed.

"No?"

"No," she said, frustrated.

"Fine," he said, tossing back the covers.

"What? Fine?" she asked.

"Yep. Fine," he said. He picked her up and simply apparated out of the bedroom with her. He took the chance to move her to the room he used. He laid her on the bed and drew out a 'forbidden' muggle computer laptop.

"Contraband?" she asked.

"Perfectly acceptable in Bulgaria," he shrugged.

"This is not Bulgaria," she said.

"Are you bored or are you not?" he asked, opening a drawer. He managed to find a muggle mystery movie. He helped her get comfortable on his bed with pillows and a blanket. He sat in a chair nearby and settled in to help her get her mind off the nonsense in her life just for awhile.