The Next Life (Napoleon Bonaparte x Reader)

The Next Life

The letter in your hand trembled, a frantic and uneasy motion that your body took as your anxiety rose. Your eyes fixed on the parchment, carefully folded and sealed, a seal you did not want to break.

Disbelief still swam through you. It took hold of every part of your being, it wrapped its hands around your heart and clouded your mind. Both refused to accept the facts presented to you, to acknowledge this was not a bad dream but the waking nightmare that had become your life. But it could not have been real, you did not want it to be, you refused to let it be.

Yet days had passed.

The signs, or lack thereof, all pointed to one end.

Napoleon was dead.

Even the inhabitants of the mansion knew it, that everything that had happened and the inability to find so much of a sign of their friend... even a vampire could not have survived.

Still, you stubbornly refused to accept it to drown in the pain and sorrow that wanted to pull you under.

So after three days of holding up in your room, of crying yourself to sleep, desperately trying to convince yourself he would walk through those doors at any moment, you finally returned to the land of the living. You, yourself, felt anything but alive though because some part of you had been stolen and left a gaping hole in your chest.

That was when Sebastian had come to you, or more specifically, given you something when you came to him for work.

You wanted a distraction, something to busy your mind and hands because your mind and heart both assured you, any moment, he would come through the mansion's grand doors and sweet you into his arms.

The letter in your trembling fingers chipped away at that hope. The sinking feeling in your gut grew, consuming you, making your senses swim and swirl as you grew nauseous.

Your name, written ever so eloquently, was the only thing that gave a sign to what or who this letter was for.

Your head was spinning, the kitchen floor swayed underneath your feet but you swore your body was rooted in place. Yet the room rocked, trying to get you to stumble, to fall and the pit in your gut was only made worse.

Denial.

That was what you were told, that you were in denial.

And this letter in your hand, the last thing your beloved left for you, was chipping away at the walls you had so quickly built— the walls of denial to defend yourself against the shock and pain of the truth.

You ran.

You ran straight from the kitchen and into the hall. Your feet moved on their own volition, your body following as you allowed yourself to be led away with only one thought— away.

There was no saying why, but it was as if you believed you could outrun the thoughts, the truth, that if you fled then that feeling of sinking and being consumed would be left behind.

Into the foyer you rushed, stumbling down the stairs and straight into someone.

Your body collided against his. Hands found their way to your arms, bracing you from a fall. Your head lifted instinctively, panicked and wide eyes finding a single violet one gazing down at you. An unusual note of concern shifting the usually stoic expression of his.

If you had been in any other state, you would have found it strange to see Jean about and in the mansion at this time, but you had hardly noticed him.

Jean's lips were moving but the blood rushing through your skull drowned out his voice. The beat of your heart echoed like a low drum as it hammered against your ribcage, begging to be let out, to be stopped, to be in any place or state but where it was now.