Rip Van Winkle
Legacy Name: The Huntress

Luke Valentine was a difficult vampire to have for a best friend.

It wasn't that Rip Van Winkle didn't appreciate what an exceptional man Luke was, and it wasn't that she didn't adore him.

Luke was just. . . difficult.

A lot of the hiccups in their relationship weren't Luke's fault. The Millennium Organization, in which they were both officers, had a lot to do with why Rip and Luke didn't get to spend much time together. Each of them often had assignments that took precedence over everything else, and they almost never were put on the same mission together. Rip usually worked alone or with Zorin Blitz, whereas Luke worked nearly exclusively with his obnoxious younger brother, Jan.

Jan himself was an impediment to Luke and Rip's relationship, considering how much of Luke's time and attention he absorbed. Of course, Rip understood that family came first, even though she'd outlived her own family by decades as she'd known she would when she chose to become a vampire. Still, Jan was an adult and a vampire himself, and Rip had made it clear to both him and Luke that his big brother shouldn't have to be responsible for him any longer just because Jan was a vulgar, bratty man-child who couldn't function on his own.

Upon hearing this, Jan had stormed off after calling Rip a number of obscene names. (At least, she assumed they were all obscene; some were words she'd never heard before even though she had learned English back in the 1930s.) Luke had argued with Rip in his brother's defense, then stormed off as well when Rip intimated that Jan was only a vulgar, bratty man-child because Luke had spoiled and coddled him his entire life.

As usually happened, Rip and Luke had made up within a few hours, and even Jan forgave her eventually. After that, Rip didn't try to compete with Jan for Luke's attention, and just marked the younger Valentine brother down on her mental list of reasons why Luke was difficult.

Some of the other difficulties were Luke's fault. He was vain and pretentious, obsessed with his looks and what others thought of him. As such, he came off as arrogant and cold to most people. Rip often felt irritated by Luke's obsession with appearing practically perfect in every way, like a male Mary Poppins who hated children and refused to get his hands dirty.

And yet, Rip was able to look past it, because she understood it. She understood Luke, as no one else but his brother could, since she and Jan were the only people Luke was willing to be himself around. The Valentine brothers had grown up in an abusive household until Luke ran away with Jan one night, even though he was just a young teenager and Jan was still a child.

The brothers had lived on the streets in abject poverty for a long time after that, and Rip knew that that had a lot to do with why Luke acted the way he did. His fear of being less than perfect had begun with parents who tormented him for the smallest perceived mistakes, and it had only grown once he'd become an adult. No matter how well he played the part of the wealthy, posh gentleman and consummate vampire, in his mind Luke was still an inadequate, impoverished street rat unable to give his brother the life Jan deserved. And he was terrified that one day, everyone would find him out.

So even as hard as it was to schedule time to spend with Luke, and as frustrating as he could be, Rip focused on the other things—not the difficulties, but the things that made him easy for her to love.

When he was being himself with her, Rip loved how silly Luke could act and the way he swore almost as much as Jan did. He actually listened to her, something no one else in Millennium did, and tried to assuage her fears despite his own. He didn't mock her for how easily she cried; he tolerated her frequent mood swings from manic highs to the depths of despair and back again. He even tolerated her singing, a tendency to burst into song—usually German opera—at random moments.

It also didn't hurt that Luke was beautiful. Rip's own hair came close to reaching the floor, but Luke's was nearly as long, falling to his knees. Luke's eyes were almost literally the color of emeralds, his skin flawless, and his physique tall, broad, and trim. They were about the same height, and aside from Rip being thinner and lankier, they might have been negative images of one another: her hair black and his blond, her eyes blue and his green, her glasses silver and his gold. They shared similar mannerisms and facial expressions, and more than once when they'd irritated him, Jan had groaned, “Ugh, you two are just alike.” Rip knew he resented her for it, resented that when faced with the three of them, a stranger would assume that Luke was Rip's brother instead of Jan's.

But she didn't let that stop her from spending time with Luke when she could. Luckily, they enjoyed many of the same activities, and their areas of expertise complemented one another. Luke had far more fashion sense than Rip did, so when they went shopping, he helped her choose which clothes to buy. On the other hand, Rip was a far better shot than Luke, and she tutored him when they practiced on the firing range.

“You are fast, mein Liebling, but your aim is poor,” she scolded him one afternoon.

Luke rolled his eyes behind the gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose and retorted, “Oh, that's easy for you to say! I don't have magic bullets that give me perfect aim!”

“Hmph, that has nothing to do with it!” declared Rip. “It is not the bullets that give me perfect aim—I was an excellent shot even before I became a vampire! Just as you were quick on your feet. Being turned did not create our abilities, only enhanced them. So yes, being able to control what you call my 'magic bullets' makes me more powerful. . . but I still had to put in many hours of practice to use my gun well. And so do you!”

Luke sighed and regarded his small handgun with a tired look as he muttered, “Sometimes I think Jan has the right idea. . . a gun for each hand and instead of aiming, just shoot everything.”

Rip laughed and put her spindly hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “Let me tell you something I read one time, called the Gunslinger Creed. Very astute considering the source, and it may help you. It even helped me.”

“What is it?” Luke turned his head to look at her.

She cleared her throat and said in her melodious voice with its heavy German accent she could never lose, “'I do not aim with my hand; I aim with my eye. I do not shoot with my hand; I shoot with my mind.'”

Rip fixed her sapphire-blue eyes on Luke's emerald-green ones and finished softly, “'I do not kill with my gun. I kill with my heart.'”

Luke regarded her in silence a moment then repeated in a murmur, “'I kill with my heart.' Yes. Very astute. What is the source, if I may ask?”

Rip laughed again and shook her head. “Nein, Liebling! It does not matter. Just remember it.” She knew better than to tell Luke, with all his pretensions, that the Gunslinger Creed came from a Stephen King novel.

Rip shoved Luke's shoulder gently to move him aside, then took aim at his target herself and chanted her own creed of sorts, which she repeated in every battle: “Tinker, tailor, solider, sailor—my bullet punishes all without distinction!”

With a twitch of her long finger, Rip's musket fired a round “magic bullet,” yet as she had said, she did not shoot with her hand but with her mind. The bullet tore through the dead center of the human-shaped target's head, and then made a U-turn in the air to burst out of the chest of the target from behind.

Its new trajectory had it flying directly at Luke's own chest, but with his ability of super speed, he easily dodged it as Rip had known he would. If he hadn't, his body had the regenerative ability to heal a bullet wound almost instantly; nevertheless, Rip wouldn't have deliberately shot her best friend in the chest if she thought she'd actually hit him.

Luke glared at her and grumbled, “Show off!”

Rip gave him a sweet smile that to any other man would have been terrifying thanks to the large number of sharp teeth it revealed. “Keep practicing!”

Luke did so, and he improved over time. He would always fight best with his knife, which was almost an extension of his body as Rip's musket was almost an extension of hers. Yet his speed was an asset to his shooting, allowing Luke to kill a person before they even knew they were targeted as long as his aim was true.

Rip hoped that the Gunslinger Creed would help with that. She wished that she could always fight at Luke's side, but since that could not be, she gave him the creed to keep with him in her stead.

I aim with my mind. I shoot with my eye. I kill with my heart.

–

Besides shopping and target practice, Rip and Luke also enjoyed watching movies together. They took turns choosing the movies, since Rip had never seen most of Luke's favorite films, and vice versa.

Rip's choices were almost all German, and mostly old. Since Luke knew nothing of the language aside from the phrases Rip said most often, they watched her movies with English subtitles (which sometimes led to Rip ranting about the wording and inaccuracies of the translations). Luke viewed them with an open mind and could usually find something in each that resonated with him, despite being an American born decades after most were produced.

Rip showed Luke more than one version of her favorite opera, Der Freischütz—sometimes movie adaptations but more often filmed performances of the opera as it was written. Luke understood why Rip identified with the antagonist, the huntsman Kaspar upon whom the demon Samiel had bestowed charmed bullets. . . and why she lived in fear that one day, her own Samiel would come for her soul, as he had come for Kaspar's.

They also watched Fritz Lang's Metropolis, with its message of class warfare and the solution to finding peace: “The mediator between head and hands must be the heart.” Luke and Rip both found meaning in it. He had grown up in poverty and she in privilege, yet their love for one another transcended their differences.

Since Luke never complained about the movies Rip chose, she did her best to be equally tolerant of his choices. It wasn't always easy. Luke said he liked to watch movies with her that “made him think,” since he never got that opportunity with his brother. Jan refused to watch anything that didn't involve action, gory horror, or crude comedy, so Luke enjoyed the chance to share films with someone who could appreciate them.

His favorite directors were Christopher Nolan and David Lynch, and while Rip considered herself to be highly intelligent, she couldn't make heads or tails out of most of the movies Luke showed her. She managed to provide somewhat coherent commentary on Interstellar, and she actually got enjoyment out of The Prestige and Fire Walk with Me, if only because of David Bowie's small roles in each. Yet sometimes she had absolutely nothing to contribute, like when they watched Lynch's first film, Eraserhead. The only thing in the entire movie that made sense was the title, because at one point, pencil erasers were indeed manufactured from someone's brain.

It was Rip's turn next, and she chose Die Dreigroschenoper, The Threepenny Opera—a musical rather than a true opera, but a favorite of hers nevertheless. She thought Luke would appreciate the setting of London, where he and Jan were usually stationed, and the knife-wielding main character who had overcome poverty through crime. . . just like Luke.

Rip had managed to get enough time off to visit Luke in London, where she reclined against him on the couch in the living room of the flat he shared with his brother. Jan had gone out for the evening (Gott sei Dank, thought Rip), so their movie night promised to be free of raucous, foul-mouthed disruptions.

As the film opened with a song, “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer,” Rip sang along in German while Luke read the subtitles. He'd frowned at the start of the melody, and when he read the first lines, he exclaimed, “Hey, that's 'Mack the Knife'!”

“Hmm?” Rip paused the movie and tilted her head to look up at him from where it rested on his shoulder. “You've seen this one before?”

“No, but the song—an American named Louis Armstrong sang it, a lot later than this. It's called 'Mack the Knife.'”

Rip laughed and informed Luke, “Well of course, Liebling! Mackie Messer is the main character of the film, and messer is German for 'knife.'” Luke gave her an annoyed glance—he didn't like being lectured, even by her—so she added, “But I didn't know that, about the American song. You'll have to find it for me, because I'd like to hear it.”

Die Dreigroschenoper told the story of Mackie Messer's marriage to Polly Peachum, the daughter of a rival criminal, and how he manipulated his way out of Peachum's plot for revenge. Rip echoed softly the song Polly sang after her wedding:

Perhaps I too would have a suitor one day,
Then I must know what to do.
And if he's rich and if he's nice,
And if his collar is white as snow,
And if he knows how to treat a lady,
Then I shall tell him. . . .

When Rip finished the chorus with a rousing, “Nein!”, Luke laughed and Rip teased him with a grin, “Hmm. . . you are rich and you treat me well—and you always wear white. Too bad for you, Liebling! If I want to become Frau Valentine, I shall have to marry your brother instead!”

“Don't even joke about that,” Luke replied darkly.

Yet as she listened to the rest of Polly's song, Rip's smile faded. She hadn't watched the movie in a while and had remembered it as mostly humorous, but now she was reminded of the subtle darkness of its theme:

Oh you can't just lie back.
You must be cold and heartless as you know,
Or else all sorts of things could happen.
Yes, there's just one answer. . .
No.

“Cold and heartless,” Rip thought. That is what Millennium has trained me to be, these past decades. That's what I thought I was, until I found Luke. I love him—not as a suitor but as the only true friend I've ever had. . . and now, because I love him, all sorts of things could happen.

No matter that he is a vampire like me, no matter how fast he is or how skilled with his knife and his gun. He's said himself, there is nothing truly immortal in this world, and one day Samiel may come for him. . . as one day Samiel may come for me. We could die, either of us or both of us. We could lose one another forever.

All sorts of things could happen.

Rip said none of this to Luke and tried to enjoy the movie instead. Her favorite character played a larger role in the second act: Mackie's former lover Jenny, whom he had spurned in favor of Polly. When the police came searching for Mackie to take him to be hanged, Jenny tipped them off out of her bitter jealousy, then sang about her fantasy of revenge upon Mackie and everyone else who had always looked down on her:

And a ship with eight sails and fifty cannons
Will lay siege to the town.
A hundred men will land in the bright midday sun
And stealthily step through the shadows.
They'll enter every doorway, grab every man they see,
And clap them in chains and bring them to me,
And ask me, “Which shall we kill?”
And ask me, “Which shall we kill?”

That noon there'll be quiet in the harbor
As they ask me, “Who is to die?”
And then they'll hear my reply. . .
“All of 'em!”

Rip sang with her, imagining taking her own revenge as the captain of a ship of men sworn to do her bidding, the one who got to choose who lived and who died. And all of them would die, she vowed, all who had ever disparaged herself and Luke, all who had ever hurt them. . . even Samiel.

But then, despite all that bravado, Jenny relented after just a few sweet words from Mackie, and she helped him escape his certain death.

“Dummkopf!” Rip muttered. “As if he ever loved her! He only used her and then threw her away. I would have let them take him, and then gone to see him hang!”

Luke said nothing, only tightened his arm around her shoulders.

In the last scene of the film, Mackie Messer and Polly, Polly's father, and the corrupt chief of police joined forces to run the bank Polly had taken over with Mackie's gang. Luke chuckled, and Rip supposed the movie had a happy ending as far as the two of them should be concerned. As criminals themselves, they should be glad to see the criminals win.

Yet Rip couldn't be glad as she murmured along with the reprise of “Die Moriat” that played over the scene of Mackie and the others gloating:

There are some who are in darkness,
And the others are in light,
And you see the ones in brightness.
Those in darkness drop from sight.

The film ended with the image not of the winners, but the losers: a crowd of London's poor, trudging away into the night.

Normally after one of her favorite movies ended, Rip was full of excitement, chattering away about it and asking Luke a barrage of questions about his thoughts. Now, though, she remained silent, without lifting her head from Luke's shoulder.

“What's wrong?” Luke asked softly.

“'Die im Dunklen,'” she murmured. “'Those in darkness.' That's us, Luke. And I'm afraid that someday, we too will fade from the world's sight. . . and from each other's. They use us too—Millennium uses us as much as Mackie Messer used Jenny, and I guess that makes me a Dummkopf as well.”

She turned her head to press her face into Luke's long hair against his neck and mumbled, “What if one day, we're no longer useful? If they throw us away when they are through with us. . . I'm afraid that I will lose you.”

Luke didn't reassure her; he didn't say that of course he would always be there with her. He didn't say that all sorts of things wouldn't happen.

And that was another reason Rip Van Winkle loved Luke Valentine: he never lied to her. Everyone else around her was disingenuous or unctuous, telling her what she wanted to hear just as Mackie had told Jenny he cared for her. She didn't want false assurances that everything would be all right, and she knew Luke wouldn't give her any.

Instead, he squeezed her shoulders and rested his cheek against the top of her head, then said, “You're right—we may lose sight of each other someday. But Rip. . . we can see each other right now.”

–

Almost a month passed before Rip had another chance to spend time with Luke, when he and Jan had to report to Millennium's base in Germany where Rip lived most of the time.

“I found the 'Mack the Knife' song for you to hear,” Luke said while they were hanging out in Rip's room in the barracks. He stuck a CD in her player, and Rip listened to Louis Armstrong sing the Americanized version of “Die Moriat” in his raspy voice:

Oh the shark has pretty teeth, dear,
And he shows them pearly white.
Just a jackknife has Macheath, dear,
And he keeps it out of sight. . . .

Afterwards, she laughed and said, “I like it! It's more cheerful than the original, at least.”

Luke smiled and told her, “I read the play that inspired the movie, too—The Beggar's Opera.”

“Of course you did,” Rip sighed. “Your brother is right. You are a nerd.”

“Make fun of me if you want,” Luke replied, unperturbed, “but I think you might like the ending verse. In this case, the original is more cheerful than the derivative.”

“Oh?” Rip arched a dark eyebrow.

Luke looked at her steadily and quoted from memory, “'But think of this maxim, and put off your sorrow, the wretch of today may be happy tomorrow.'”

Rip remained quiet a moment, thinking, All sorts of things may happen, but maybe. . . maybe some of them could be good things. If we do lose sight of each other, maybe eventually we'll find one another again.

She stepped forward and wrapped both arms around Luke's broad shoulders, hugging him tightly as she whispered, “Danke, mein Liebling. Thank you for giving me hope. We are those in darkness. . . but you are my light.”