And the Sky Was Made of Amethyst

by Ashes_of_Rowan

Summary:

It’s the 90’s, Halbrand is twenty-seven, strung out, and ready to let the city swallow him whole—until something dark and beautiful finds him first.

Notes:

Inspired by Morfydd Clark’s comment on her dream role of playing a Vampire. Let’s manifest this into reality!

Thanks to my friends in chat I was inspired to start writing this story. It won’t be this sad the whole time I promise!

Chapter 1: Under the Bridge

I'll start this off without any words

I got so high I scratched 'till I bled
I love myself better than you
I know it's wrong so what should I do?
The finest day that I've ever had
Was when I learned to cry on command

I love myself better than you
I know it's wrong so what should I do?

Love myself better than you
I know it's wrong, so what should I do? (Ooh, ooh)

- “On a Plain” Nirvana Unplugged

 

---

 

Dawn breaks, and the early light stretches across the water, red and angry, like a curse waiting to be spoken. The horizon bleeds in slow motion, thick bands of fire smeared against the sky. Halbrand hasn’t slept. He rarely does these days. What’s the point, when every night drags him down into the same pit, and every morning spits him back out just as hollow? His chest feels like an abandoned room echoing, empty, filled with nothing but the ache of loneliness rattling around inside.

He sits on a massive chunk of brokenconcrete, the remains of some forgotten structure. Rusted rebar claws out from the sides like skeletal fingers. His old green cardigan, stretched thin, patched with holes, is more memory than fabric now, but it keeps him warm enough. Barely. His jeans, though, are wrecked beyond saving, denim shredded into ribbons that flap against his skin in the morning wind. Pale patches of flesh show through, scraped and raw where the fabric surrendered years ago.

The air smells like brine and old rust. A breeze sweeps in from the water, tugging at his shaggy, reddish-brown hair, strands brushing against his jaw and catching on his stubble. His golden-green eyes catch the sunrise, reflecting it back like tarnished coins. For a long while he just stares, mesmerized, hypnotized by the bleeding horizon. He wonders again, the same tired thought he’s had a thousand times, how the fuck he ended up here.

Halbrand never had much of a chance. His parents were drunks. His father worked graveyard shifts, sleeping through the day, and when he was awake, the house turned into a battleground. His parents fought constantly, always with the screaming matches that shook the walls, arguments that went on for hours until things got thrown, broken, smashed. It was the kind of chaos that made his stomach knot even before it started. More than once, the neighbors called the cops, and the blue-and-red lights would wash through the windows while his mother sobbed and cursed on the porch, his father pacing and swearing at the officers. Halbrand would sit in his room, clutching a pillow to his chest, knowing they’d be back at it the second the police drove away.

His mother, always with a bottle clutched in her fist, had venom ready for him too. Worthless. Useless. Nothing. She’d spit the words like poison, drilling them in until he half believed them himself.

By thirteen, he was done. One night he just walked out and never looked back. The streets were brutal, but at least they weren’t home. At least he didn’t have to hear the screaming anymore. Out there, he learned how to beg, how to lift a wallet without getting caught, how to curl up in alleys and make himself small. For a while, couch surfing kept him clean, but doors closed fast, and friends stopped answering. Hunger became a constant. And eventually, he found the kind of poison that made the hunger fade.

Things were never going to get better, and he knows it. Today is his twenty-seventh birthday. He’d always joked half to himself, half to anyone who’d listen that he wouldn’t live past twenty-seven. Whether by his own hand, by a stranger’s knife, or by the needle didn’t matter. One way or another, his clock was running down. And now, staring at the sunrise, he feels it in his bones. He’s tired. So fucking tired.

By mid-morning, he drags himself downtown, the coins from yesterday’s panhandling clinking faintly in his pocket. Just enough for a tallboy and a pack of smokes. It’ll get him through the day, keep the shakes away.

Cat is already at her usual corner, crouched low with her palms out to the work crowd hurrying past. She looks rough, smeared eyeliner making raccoon rings under her bloodshot eyes, ripped pantyhose laddered all the way up, and that same baggy GWAR shirt she swiped from the laundromat. It hangs off her thin frame like armor, worn soft, cozy in its filth. Her skin is pale, too pale, as if even the streetlights don’t want to touch her. If Halbrand’s ever had a friend, it’s her. But friendships here don’t mean much. Out here, everyone’s just sharing the same misery, feeding off each other’s scraps of pain.

“Got any smokes, Hal?!” Cat’s voice rasps across the street, already needy, already demanding. Always wanting something.

“Hey, Kitty Crack,” he mutters back, voice flat, “yeah, gimme a minute. I’m about to get some.”

The day stretches on, endless and gray, bleeding into itself the way all his days do. He drifts from one cluster of faces to another, transients like him, ghosts of the city clinging to bridges and underpasses. They trade half-empty beers, bum cigarettes, talk shit about nothing, wait for the sun to go down.

By sunset, the itch starts. It’s crawling under his skin, gnawing at his veins. He hasn’t told anyone it’s his birthday. Why would he? It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just another day closer to the end.

“Hey, Chaz.” His voice is low, urgent, hungry. “You got any shit, man? It’s been all day. I’m not doin’ well.”

Chaz, the crusty punk with a mohawk that’s more grease than hair dye, snorts. His bloodshot eyes flash mean. “Don’t give shit out for free, Hal.”

Halbrand grits his teeth, shoving down his pride. Pride doesn’t mean a thing when your veins are screaming. “Dude, it’s my fucking birthday. Just this once?”

Chaz’s grin cracks wide, and he throws his head back, belting out an off-key, mocking tune: “Haaaappy birthday to youuu!” The sound bounces off the bridge walls, jagged and ugly. The others laugh. Halbrand rolls his eyes, jaw tight. Then Chaz shrugs and digs into his bag. “Alright, fine. I’ll help you out. But you owe me one.”

“Fuck, thanks. I’ll owe you, I swear.”

The rig comes out. Chaz sets it up with the casual precision of practice, and Halbrand doesn’t hesitate. The needle bites deep, sharp and merciless, and then the flood hits. Warmth explodes through his veins, his body sinking, surrendering, the world slipping sideways into euphoria.

He leans back into the damp concrete, eyes rolling toward the bruised purple sky. The laughter fades. The city sounds blur. Time slips, breaks apart. By the time he blinks again, the others are gone.

It’s just him now. Him and the mud, the cold seeping into his bones, the pulse in his veins slowing, slowing.

His birthday. Alone. Under a bridge. On the edge of nothing. And he’s fine with it. He’s ready.

The city hum fades. His heartbeat stutters, weaker with every breath. He waits for the dark to take him.

But something else arrives instead.

The air cools, sharp and biting, as if winter itself had slipped beneath the bridge. The hairs rise on his arms. He forces his eyes open, drug-hazed and heavy, and at first he thinks it’s just another hallucination.

But then pale hands, a sweep of black fabric, eyes like moonlight.

Chapter 2: Arsenic and Black Lace

Summary:

Galadriel watches as the man she pulled back from death opens his eyes beneath the amethyst sky. Fear and questions blaze in his gaze, and when he whispers “What happened to me?” she realizes the battle for his soul may have only just begun.

And the sky was made of amethyst
And all the stars were just like little fish
You should learn when to go
You should learn how to say no

Might last a day, yeah
Mine is forever
Might last a day, yeah
Mine is forever

When they get what they want, and they never want it again
And they get what they want, and they never want it again
Go on, take everything, take everything, I want you to
Go on, take everything, take everything, I want you to

And the sky was all violet
I want it again, but violent, more violent
Yeah, I'm the one with no soul
One above and one below

Might last a day, yeah
Mine is forever
Might last a day, yeah
Mine is forever

- Violet by Hole

 

---

Immortality had its gifts, and for Galadriel, the greatest was music. Her first devotion had been Mozart. She remembered the hush of candlelit halls in Munich, the brilliance of Vienna in the 1760s, when mortal hands reached for the divine and nearly touched it. For years, no sound moved her so deeply. Then came the gramophone, a miracle that trapped music in amber, letting her carry it through the centuries like a secret flame.

Mozart never left her, but time tempered her ear, leading her into darker soundscapes. Goth, industrial, the hymns of the restless night. Switchblade Symphony, Bauhaus, Type O Negative, Nine Inch Nails. These songs curled like smoke through her immortal veins, echoing something eternal within her.

It was the music that called her to this city, and the atmosphere that bound her here. She haunted its nightclubs and goth nights like a phantom queen, slipping into shadows where basslines pulsed like heartbeats and strobe lights fractured into silver and smoke. In those moments, the centuries blurred, and she felt not only immortal but alive.

But immortality is a lonely crown. She had been alone for twenty years now. The one who made her had scorned her, and she fled without looking back. Let him search for her. Let him drown in his misery or in the arms of his whores. She cares nothing for him anymore. 

Still, hunger demanded its toll. She fed sparingly, never enough to raise suspicion in the city she loved. She chose her prey with care: the forgotten ones. The addicts, the transients, the loveless and the lonely. The ones the world had already discarded.

By day she slept in a derelict loft downtown, hidden from the sun’s fatal gaze. Bats nested in the rafters, but she welcomed their company. Around her, she had collected an assortment of gothic fashions, folded away in a weathered chest: black lace gloves, crushed velvet gowns, crimson slip dresses, towering platform boots. The essentials.

Tonight, she chose a short black skirt and fishnet stockings, a blood-red corset laced tight against her immortal frame. Around her throat she clasped a lace choker with a silver cross. A bit ironic, a smudge harmless, and a little cruel. Her fingers glittered with gaudy rings, her eyeliner sharp as bat wings. She looked like sin itself as she slipped on her trench coat, descended the fire escape, and stepped into the night.

The sun had just sunk below the horizon, leaving the sky a fragile violet, as if the heavens themselves were carved from amethyst. She drifted with the night toward the river, her senses sharp, attuned to the tremor of life.

A pack of transient youths staggered across the bridge, drunk on cheap liquor, shouting slurs and songs into the dark. For a moment, she considered following. But then she felt it.

Him.

A dying man beneath the bridge. The perfect opportunity.

She slipped down into the shadows, silent as smoke, and found him half sprawled in the damp dirt, half propped against a slab of concrete. Death clung to him already; she would need to act quickly.

She knelt before him. Young, mid to late twenties. Handsome, with a face like a Caravaggio painting. Nostalgia stirred in her, but there was no time for sentiment. His eyelids fluttered, and suddenly his gaze caught hers.

Those eyes. There was something in them, something that struck her deeper than it should have.

He tried to speak, a weak murmur, but she silenced him with a touch. She cupped his face in her hands, whispered apologies against his fading breath, and bent to the pulse in his neck. Her fangs pierced. His blood was weak, yet rich, and a sigh escaped his lips, a soft moan caught between pain and release.

But then, an unease. Something twisted in her, sudden and sharp. She tore herself away, blood trailing down her chin, dripping onto his shirt like spilled rubies.

Their eyes met again. He smiled faintly, as if forgiving her.

She faltered. She could not finish. She should, mercy demanded it. Otherwise he could turn. Yet her hand froze, her hunger warred with something older, deeper.

And then, recklessly, she weighed the choice before her. 

What if she could save him? What if she could give him a new life?

She imagined the life he might have lived. Ordinary, mortal, fleeting. Perhaps he had once laughed too loud with friends in bars, or kissed someone under neon lights with a promise he meant to keep. Perhaps he had a mother who worried, a sister who prayed for him, someone who would wait at a window that never opened again. Or maybe he never had any of these things at all. 

But fate had abandoned him here, broken beneath a bridge, nameless and dying. Forgotten by the world.

And hadnt she, too, been abandoned once? Cast aside, left to fend for herself in the silence of immortality? The loneliness clawed at her even now. She had promised herself never to make one. Never to bind someone else to this hunger. 

Yet when she looked at him, she could not help but think: why should he die like this? Alone, unloved, wasted by the world that never cared for him? What if she could give him a life he never had a chance at?

If she turned away now, he would be gone before the hour ended. But if she acted, if she risked it, perhaps he could be reborn into something greater. Stronger. Eternal. Someone with purpose. Someone to fill the emptiness. Someone to walk in the shadows beside her. Someone who would make her not feel so terribly alone.

Without another thought, she raised her wrist, bit deep, and pressed it against his mouth. At first he drank hesitantly, like a child tasting wine. Then his need surged, frantic, desperate. His body started to convulse, thrashing violently, as though torn between life and death. No scream came, only silence broken by his ragged gasps. At last he stilled, his head lolling against her lap, falling into a strange and uneasy sleep.

She cradled him there, rocking gently as though he were something fragile. Time slowed, the river murmured its endless hymn, and she waited.

When at last his heart stilled, she bent close, whispering into the night, unsure whether she had given him damnation or deliverance.

And then..

His eyes flew open. A sharp gasp tore from his throat, dragging him back from the abyss. Eyes blazing bright under the amethyst sky. 

His eyes locked onto her again, sharp, full of fear and questioning. 

Then he said in almost a whisper “what happened to me?”

Galadriel did not answer at once. Her gaze lingered on the strange shimmer in his eyes like starlight caught in deep water.

“You should be dead,” she said at last, voice low.

The fear in his expression twisted into something darker.

“Yeah… I should.”