Prince Vlad, Dracula ([personal profile] vojvode) wrote2010-03-26 09:54 pm
Entry tags:

[oom] A cellar, reprised

[ cont'd from here and here ]

He waits, motionless, listening to the conversation she's having with the female doctor.

He's become a master of waiting.

His breath stills, his heart stills, his entire body grows still. He tries not to think about the host of bodies thrumming through this place.  Tries not to think about the anguish he has caused her, merely by existing.

Elizabeta, my sweet Elizabeta.  If only there had been another way.

Time is meaningless in the moments like this.  Pain and hunger and the sorrow of his human heart, all meaningless.

When she returns, he has settled in one of the few chairs here, straight backed as if he is sitting in a throne. His hands are tucked into his sleeves, and his eyes fix on her face the moment she crosses the threshold.

"Will she keep her word?"

He cannot keep the edge from his voice, though whether it is fear or rage, it is difficult to tell.
sunbaked_baker: (cast down)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-03-27 05:29 am (UTC)(link)
Rae's knuckles are white against the silvery metal of the thermos as she enters, her grip keeping her hands from shaking too visibly.

She can't look at him right now. Instead, she takes the thermos over to the counter graced with the gouge-marks. Hurt and anger are all that's keeping her warm, all that's keeping her moving, keeping her from turning back to the fear and uncertainty of this... experiment.

"I don't know," she says, voice rough. "I think so."

She hopes so, or else her friend thinks even less of her than Sunshine knows.
sunbaked_baker: (...dreamed the dress was made of blood)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-03-27 05:55 am (UTC)(link)
His question recalls her to why she's there, why she went to get the thermos in the first place. Rae glances at him, the natural evening shadows as bright as day to her. She sees, yes. Too well.

It just brings back everything Thirteen had said to her.

"Yes," she says, looking away again.

It takes great effort to unscrew the lid of the thermos and reach out to hand the thermos to him.

She doesn't look, though. What member of the herd wants to watch the predator making his choice?
sunbaked_baker: (...dreamed the dress was made of blood)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-03-30 03:49 am (UTC)(link)
It is not just fear that makes her look away. Hurt and anger and the sick-making sight and smell and thought of the blood are contenders enough for fear. Rae tries to focus on the calming scents of the kitchen, the sweet and spicy smells of cinnamon, sugar and yeasty dough, the sharper smell of the dark chocolate. Familiar, grounding, human scents.

"Drink," she says, her voice steady but still rough from her earlier conversation. "Just please don't expect me to watch."
sunbaked_baker: (...dreamed the dress was made of blood)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-03-30 04:20 am (UTC)(link)
There is no sigh, no need of breath while drinking, but it not absolutely silent - she can still hear it. Hear him drinking. Someone's blood. A person, a human (when did those become no longer exactly synonymous?) gave that blood, and likely don't even know what it was to be used for. They probably thought it was going to be used to save another human who needed blood. Not -

- This.

This, it's the moment of truth, isn't it? To determine whether her trip to the bar on his behalf was not completely in vain ("And why didn't you fucking ask him, then, if he knows the rules, since you're so fucking buddy-buddy with him."), or if she will be the alternative.

As he finishes, she can't help but look.
sunbaked_baker: (with the sun at your back)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-03-30 04:39 am (UTC)(link)
She watches the transformation without falter. Rae seems about to say something, but seeing his smirk, her face darkens slightly and her lips thin.

Oh don't even-

But of course he would.

"Well," she says after a moment. "You don't look like you're about to keel over any more."

Of course, he hadn't looked like he was going to keel over to begin with, and she knows it. Despite the sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, the seemingly fragile skin stretched over his knuckles, even she was able to see the strength and... vitality, for lack of better word, beneath the surface. He'd be fine once he'd had supper.

Which he'd just had. And he does look better.

Pity about the attitude, though. It makes her wonder just a little bit if she should have done as Thirteen had suggested.
sunbaked_baker: (with the sun at your back)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-03-30 04:55 am (UTC)(link)
She doesn't like thinking of the difference in the warmth of his hand.

"It's not the same thing at all. Wheat and sugar and cinnamon..." Are not someone's blood. You have someone's blood, you have power over them. Even non-magic-handlers know that. Taking someone's blood is taking their power. Nearly all the strongest of dark magics require blood (hair at the very least); not that anyone needed another reason to have bad connotations with blood, in addition to the suckers overrunning the world.

"I get the shakes over seeing plain pink hamburger. Blood's just... worse." She hadn't needed the reminder of what he is; she tries not to think about it and he smirks about it.
sunbaked_baker: (sun-self)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-03-30 05:18 am (UTC)(link)
"Plants... aren't aware in the same way; they don't have to see it coming," Rae says, trying not to think of her doe, the one whose blood was taken for her, given to her.

(... she can remember the way her delicate hooves dug into the soft ground, the sun-dappled leaf-shadows on her brown back, her wide ears, her cool, liquid brown eyes as she lifted her head, acknowledging the oncoming death without fear. And Sunshine still wondered sometimes, had she known what her death had beenfor?)

"I can't see a piece of meat without seeing something that has had to die. I've been a vegetarian since I was small."
sunbaked_baker: (sun-self)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-03-30 07:02 am (UTC)(link)
Her eyes are the grey-blue of a hazy summer's sky, the overhead light of the kitchen reflecting like the shine of sunlight. "Everything dies?" Rae repeats, questioningly. "Including you?"

Had he not given up his place in that cycle? Vampire drink the life of others, but that is where it stops. Vampires have no natural predators, only those who take it upon themselves to go up against them. They do not die by natural causes. They do not breed. Nothing feeds itself on them. There is no cycle when vampires are involved.

("Sunshine, there can be no clean death between one of your kind and one of mine, for all of my kind were once of yours."

"Then, it must go both ways. The death of that vampire at my hands was no cleaner than the death he was offering that girl."
)

She shakes her head as if trying to rid herself of the thought, feeling his fingers against her chin. "To die is one thing; to be killed, another. The how of it matters. The why of it matters."

She can hear Con's words in her head, of how humans are the only creatures to draw that sort of distinction. But he cannot see that it is that distinction which makes them human.
sunbaked_baker: (sun-self)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-03-31 05:22 am (UTC)(link)
She watches him, her face clouded, her thoughts returning to his story of the deception by the sultan, the anguish of the princess, the grief and rage of the prince.

"Death may be inevitable," she says, quietly. She knows it. There will come a time when she would welcome it, as long as she would be assured never to rise again afterward. "But the how matters. The why matters, or else why would we grieve?"

Why would we fear?
sunbaked_baker: (in her element)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-03-31 05:56 am (UTC)(link)
The ghost of a smile tugs at the corners of Rae's lips, but it is not a happy smile. There is sadness there, and compassion.

"We rage, we fight, we fear, we struggle. Anything to keep from giving in. And those that fall, we grieve, for we know one day we'll fall, too."

To know that what you are eating struggled, raged against the death that was waiting for it, and yet succumbed as everything eventually does... it turns her stomach. The wheat of the field does not fight the reaper; it does not fear; it does not grieve. Indeed, it has modified itself over the eons to produce more grain, for those strains are likeliest to continue being planted. Cocoa trees do not fear the harvesting of their beans. Cattle are made healthier by milking. Eggs of chickens that are laid unfertilized will not bear young, yet are nutritious and good.

Sunshine could not eat something that was aware enough to see and want to defy its fate.

(Her doe stands at the edge of the wood, half-in and half-out of the dappled leaf-shadows, on the brink of the wide, golden field, fragrant with summer grasses. She lifts her head, her liquid brown eyes acknowledging her oncoming death-)

Not willingly, at least.
sunbaked_baker: (you think so?)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-03-31 06:19 am (UTC)(link)
Sunshine's smile twists slightly into something a bit more wry.

"Not too long," she modifies.

She can't stay in Milliways forever; she knows what she will eventually have to face.
sunbaked_baker: (sun-self)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-03-31 06:35 am (UTC)(link)
"I've never believed in destiny," she says, still slightly wry, trying to back away from thoughts of Bo.

Of course, that doesn't count for much when destiny believes in you.

"Do you have to believe in something to defy it?"
sunbaked_baker: (you think so?)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-04-01 02:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Sunshine's gaze follows his glance, but she looks away again almost immediately.

"I don't know."

She can't... really imagine her next conversation with Thirteen.

"I guess it depends on you, though, wouldn't it? What you... do," another glance at the thermos, and away, "in the future."

Whether he chooses to seek his meals from patrons, or seeks his meals from the Bar.

A thought strikes Rae, though, and she looks up at him. Damn, he's tall. "Has anyone mentioned the rules of this place to you?"
sunbaked_baker: (Default)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-04-03 03:57 am (UTC)(link)
She wonders what she did to deserve that honor. She says, glancing away towards the sink, "Well, now I know that." She should do dishes before she leaves, tonight.

"The only reason Security is" hunting "trying to find you is that you've broken the bar's rules. There're only three, but they're supposedly enough to keep things peaceful here, since there're so many different kinds of people. No violence against other patrons, no business - but, 'business' meaning outside rivalries and such. If your arch-enemy came here, he mustn't do anything to you, and vice-versa. I've been told it's okay for selling things."

Or else she'd not be able to afford to stay here.

"And the last rule is that neither sex nor nudity is allowed in the bar proper."
sunbaked_baker: (what I do best)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-04-03 04:19 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, she's not looking at him as she says that last rule.

La. Dishes. She turns on the water, reaching for the scrubber sponge and the dishwashing soap.

"...Yeah." She says, attacking the baked-on bits of chocolate cake on the first pan she comes to. "There were signs up, warning people of a rash of attacks on patrons by a vampire."

Attacks. Violence, yes.
sunbaked_baker: (i carry the sun in my pocket)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-04-03 04:36 am (UTC)(link)
"Apart from puncture wounds and a lasting inability to feel safe when alone, afterward," she amends, in tones as gentle as her scrubbing of the baking pan is not.
sunbaked_baker: (what I do best)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-04-03 04:55 am (UTC)(link)
"Not nearly as much as I did when we first met," she says, holding the pan under the running water until the suds are washed away, "which possibly speaks to the growing probability that I am insane, or am a bad-blood-cross and will eventually go insane." (See her attack that next pan.)

Or, as she can't quite keep the possibility from occurring to her, he really doesn't mean her any harm.

Despite being a vampire. Two situations that the culture in which Sunshine was raised tells her are mutually exclusive. Sunshine's experience in the last few months, however, have done much to make her doubt a lot of what she's been taught.
sunbaked_baker: (you think so?)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-04-03 05:31 am (UTC)(link)
She stiffens, her hands pausing in their task. More comfortable (what a horrible thought) around him she might be, but having a vampire's mouth against her neck is a little too much.

Intending her no harm or not.

"Yes," she says, after a moment, and maybe there is something akin to wryness tinting her tone of voice, along with the stiffness. "I'll admit it's rather amazing of me that despite you doing stuff like that, I agree to get you food."

Maybe she is insane. Helping vampires takes care of quite a bit of a psychopath's quota for antisocial behavior, after all. And she doesn't want to think about his lips against her neck.
sunbaked_baker: (with the sun at your back)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-04-03 05:56 am (UTC)(link)
The awareness of that artificial calm, the possibility of it, may scare her more than he does.

But she would not ask him to leave, simply because he hasn't forced that calm upon her.

"Do you know what you'll do?" she asks, wiping the scrubber across the pan to make sure it's clean. "For food, I mean."
sunbaked_baker: (you think so?)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-04-03 06:16 am (UTC)(link)
Rae can hear it. It makes her turn, and look at him over her shoulder.

"My needs are easily met," she says. And they don't carry the risk of incensing Security.

She can't really bring herself to say it, but she is quite aware that if he came to her again, needing food, she would offer to go to the bar for him again.

She feeds the hungry. It's what she does.
sunbaked_baker: (you think so?)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-04-03 06:42 am (UTC)(link)
Rae's gaze follows his eyes, seeing the rest of him fade into the unnatural shadows that even her Dark Sight couldn't pierce. What could she ask of a vampire? This vampire, in particular.

"How about we keep it simple," she says, hesitating slightly. "You owe me dinner some time."
sunbaked_baker: (...dreamed the dress was made of blood)

[personal profile] sunbaked_baker 2010-04-04 06:34 am (UTC)(link)
"All right," she says, hesitantly, her voice barely more than a whisper. All she can see of him are his eyes, burning in the darkness he has wrapped around himself, before even they fade.

Why the hell is she doing this? Bad-blood-cross or whatever, she must be insane.

She can feel his absence, like the feeling of the sun peeking out from behind a cloud. She is alone in the kitchen.

The thermos is still there on the counter, coagulated blood on the rim. It'll need to be washed.