1Since he was sixteen and walked barefoot to the barber's himself because his mother was drunk and locked him out and his father was far too long dead to possibly be around to avail his son a key, Vaurien Scapegrace has been able to present himself to the world as having been designated a male at birth. He wasn't, and though he knows that has nothing to do with anything, the shortness of his hair gives him bravery he has never known so the next thing he does is he buys a pair of shoes since he's in town anyway.
The salesman in the shoe-store addresses him as 'sir' and helps size him and says nothing about the blisters and bruises on the soles of his feet. His name is Gerald and it takes an age for Vaurien to find a pair of shoes he likes but Gerald doesn't really seem to mind. Vaurien pays for the shoes once he finds them (they are leather, soft, and comfortable in a way nothing he's ever worn before has been) and leaves the shop wearing them. He also has Gerald's handphone number scribbled on the back of his hand – an entirely successful outing, he decides.
He is meant for great things. He knows that, has always known that, even though the universe would be happy enough for him not to. He knows that if he was just given the chance, he could shake the world on its foundations, could smash the structures that have spent so long caging him in, could truly make a difference. He is meant for great things, and he will let no one convince him otherwise.
Not even the police with their violence and their glares and their permanent records, not even his mother with her booze and her regrets and her oozing, seeping anger, not even the five men and one woman he's tried to kill at some point or another in his life. The way he sees it, there is the Righteous Future and the Entirely Unrighteous Present Day, and either people are working with him towards that Righteous Future or people are standing in his way. He is done with letting people stand in his way.
The first phone conversation he has with Gerald, he's standing outside his house, box of matches cradled in the palm of his hand and a container of gasoline by his side. He's working up the courage to let one of the things holding him down go up in flames, and he knows that it would be so easy to just let go, and he thinks that should scare him more than it does. He's taken what he wants still out, has it in a bag strapped to his back. His mother's still in there. Asleep.
He talks to Gerald in French. It's the language his mother speaks when she's sober enough to form words and inclined to address anything to him. The conversation starts out innocent, light – they talk about art, about surrealism and Raphaelites – and then Vaurien deteriorates into confession like he hasn't since he was seven and his father died and there was no one left to drag him to church. He talks about being called useless, talks about losing hope, talks about being drowned by the ways of the world.
"It's funny, you know," he says, fingers closing harshly into a fist over the flint on the side of the box. "I'm this skinny little white boy with a rich-enough family and a pretty hopeful future, and I'm smart. I know I'm smart. I'm talented too, and there's no way in the world I'm not going to become something amazing. But someone up there thinks I'm a fine joke so they made me gay and castrated me at birth." Vaurien breathes in slow. "My parents named me Grace. Fucking hilarious, isn't it?"
"You're not a joke," Gerald says simply, and then there is a buzz of static and just like that, Vaurien has come out and the world is still intact.
"Thanks," Vaurien says, and Gerald has barely had time to start on the you're welcome when Vaurien has hung up and is cheerfully committing arson.
Next time they talk, Vaurien's lying on a hotel bed staring at the cracks in the ceiling, and he tells Gerald about the attempted murders. Tells him about what he saw in their eyes until the last moments, tells him about the way their breathing had sounded. Tells him about the way his mind had spiked and his blood had raced, tells him that was the closest thing he had ever felt to right.
"I burned down my house," he says recklessly. "Murdered my mother. Skipped town. The one death I managed to succeed with, I didn't even get to watch. The police think it was an accident. She was drunk and passed out and something sparked and she had so much alcohol around anyway that it was inevitable. You can tell the police if you want. Get me arrested. I won't mind. Might be interesting."
"You said you skipped town," Gerald answers evenly. "Where are you exactly?"
Vaurien tells him and half an hour later Gerald is knocking on the hotel-room door and Vaurien kisses him on his way in and that is that.
Vaurien thinks, for a moment, that maybe he won't even need the murders after this, won't need to become more than he already is, because Gerald makes him feel right as well. The moment passes, and the next morning they've checked out of the hotel and they're still together and they leave town and they commit crimes because the world is a stifling place but they are sharp enough to cut through.
They talk in French and Gerald never calls Vaurien Grace and there are surgeries along the way, but there are also the deaths of innocents elevated to something that transcends art and those seem like so much more than just the transition, because that is making something that went wrong right and there is so much more to the killing than that.
Together, they make death into an art, but even more than that, they turn living into one as well.
A/N: I actually was quite fond of Vaurien around the time of the second book, though that faded somewhat when the whole zombie-thing started.
~Mademise Morte, February 18, 2013.