He/They/It: AlienAxe Mostly Oc/ The lost boys Au Shit Feel welcome to ignore me actually it’s preferred bc I spam but nonetheless I don’t bite I prom currently organizing
GUYS THATS MY BOY THATA MY VIGGO EVERYONE STAY CALM EVERYONE CAPMNDOW CALM DOWN
dude I’m so appreciative I genuinely can’t look at it too long without getting overly excited about it it’s just beautiful stunning i love it so much he’s so important to me
🪼 Cyrus actually doesn't sleep during the day! His sleep schedule was already shit as a human, he'd surf all day, party half the night, then come home and crash for a few hours before greeting Viggo just before sunrise to leave and start the cycle again. Once he officially didn't need sleep, he didn't bother with it. Occasionally he'll indulge in a little catnap on top of one of his buds, but otherwise it's a no thank you!
🌊 Because of his lack of sleep, Cyrus burns through his energy faster than normal and has to feed twice as much to keep himself perked up! He considers feeding to be kind of a game rather than what it actually is. He'll pick someone out, wait for them to get into the water if they're not already out there, and swim out under them. He likes to toy with his prey; pulling them under water, tipping their surfboards, or dragging them out and giving them a head start before chasing them down. It's kinda fucked up but whatever makes my princess happy!
🐚 His surfboard collection is quite large! He has his main babe who he takes excellent care of to use for competitions, one or two others that he'd gotten as backup or for casual surfing, and of course all the ones that he brings back after feedings, refusing to leave them floating around. You'll find them leaned up against the walls of the shack or laying flat across things to be used as tables and shelves!
🌊 One of my favorite things about Cyrus is those gaps between his fangs and his teeth! Cy's fangs are angled in a bit, rounder on the outside and connecting right in with his front two center teeth. They bother him a lot feeling-wise, causing him to never grow out of his "fanging" phase. He chews on objects, and Viggo, and himself. Bite bite bite, that's all he does. Eventually they just got him some bite toys because he kept accidentally swallowing plastic water bottle lids.
🪼 Very quick to move on from things. Cyrus doesn't really deal with the consequences of his or others' actions. Something horrible could happen to him and he'd be like, "Oh! Whoa, that really sucked!" but still move on almost immediately after. This makes it really hard to argue with Cyrus if you even get to that point, because he doesn't sit in guilt or shame or anything like that long enough for it to sink in or change anything. It can be annoying at times, but he's typically excited and easily agreeable so not many people argue with him anyways.
🫧 Cyrus is a very tactile person! He has little sense of personal space and loves to stand right up next to people, sling his arm around others, physically drag people places that will fix their moods, play with their hair. He doesn't like to sleep alone on the rare occasion when he does, and loves to lean on others. He's very affectionate with his friends (we see this in his relationships with Viggo and Valkyrie where he kisses them on their cheeks as greetings or farewells and hugs them and holds their hands just because he can). He'll do these things with just about anyone who will let him.
🫧 Cyrus is a very right-now type of guy. He doesn't think much about his past or about his future. He only really talks about the family that he left behind when he's high and has run out of things to talk about. He's bad at planning and good at having fun. If he's not having fun he's quick to change direction to fix that, because I can't stress enough — this man needs constant stimulation. He will NOT sit STILL.
The shack
🪼He stays up and in the shack during his daylight hours, playing around with random shit, messing around with the tunnels Viggo dug (yes, this man's still digging), decorating the shack although it's already packed with his retro tiki crap. He doesn't craft super often, but he made a bunch of recycled lanterns that he lights up nightly because it looks good! (These are made out of things he finds on the beach mostly — he's big on beach cleanup and most of his victims are people he saw littering or making the waters unsafe for others.) Eventually this job got passed onto Val, but for a while there it was a sense of responsibility he'd kept up with in a long time!
🌊 Occasionally Viggo still wakes up during the day due to visions and nightmares plaguing his existence, just to find Cyrus already up and moving stuff around in his room to entertain himself. I will say it's been easier for him to sleep in the shack than it was the cave, no matter how bad he misses it, because Cyrus is there.
🐚Cyrus's favorite way to waste time during the day is to press seashells and sea glass into the dirt walls of the underground tunnels and burrows. Yay, this is his longest-standing commitment!! The walls are just lined with them now, so much that you can't really see the dirt. It makes for nice textures and it certainly took Sam's breath away when he came to visit.
🌊 Speaking of Sam, he had no intentions of moving into the shack until graduation night came around. Before that, Sam only visited occasionally for advice or clues from Viggo and the little setups that he would lead the frogs and Joan to. He liked it there…but… he didn't wanna stay, but Cyrus made him a nice room for the just in case!
🪼 Cyrus filled it with tons of posters and magazines and random shit to try and make the kiddo (18 by this time) feel more at home, but Sam of course missed his friends and family too much for that. It was a nice thought. the whole found bin tried to make him feel comfortable, it just wasn't in the cards really.
🫧 He decorated it mostly himself, including other people's rooms, because no one had time for it and Viggo was originally just gonna sleep on the floor a lot because he was homesick for the cave. He tried his best to find things that the others would enjoy, and I think he's a sweetie for that.
As Suren Bischer from canning town 1955, where he was raised by his single father…his mother being absent for reasons he never fully got a clear explanation on. The two of them had a tough but very good relationship, because at the end of the day it really was just the two of them against the world. Mr. Bischer was a kind and well-meaning man, but he didn't always understand his son. Refusing to leave it at that, even in his exhaustion you could find him standing in his son's doorway, unfastening his tie and prodding his son for more than one-word answers and shrugs about his day.
Suren as a child was… restless, to say the least. He had lots of energy buzzing under his skin that, when left alone for too long, would fester into his nerves. Noticing how antsy his child was growing when untasked with chores and mini jobs, Mr. Bischer tried to redirect that energy into his growing creativity. Around this time, Suren's uncle, Lloyd, would drift in and out of their lives before eventually becoming semi-permanent. He'd usually come home reeking of booze amongst other more concerning things, with his guitar over his shoulder and a crate under his arm. One night after a few of being gone, he'd appeared with a duffel bag in hand and asked Mr. Bischer if it was very Christian of him to throw his little brother onto the street, and then he never left again.
Despite his father's obvious disapproval, Suren adored his uncle, idolized him even. He loved how his uncle played and sang, as bad as it was when he was smashed, and would stay up in awe of his late-night stories. Lloyd ended up teaching Suren guitar in the least professional way possible, but it was enough to light that spark of madness in him. In theory, his uncle's influence was… horrible. The drinking, in his father's words, his atheist lifestyle, his fiscal irresponsibility, and the fact that he seemed absolutely determined to stumble through adulthood like a stray dog. But seeing what his brother's music was doing for Suren… Mr. Bischer allowed it to continue.
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By secondary school
Suren still found himself to be fairly shy and a bit awkward, but did his best to take his uncle's advice in faking it until he made it. He joined a small garage band with a few classmates, mostly because there was nothing else he'd want to do with his free time… it was terrible! They were bad. Half of the boys involved treated it like a little something to do for shits and giggles before they had to grow up and get on with their lives, but there was one of them who seemed to be taking it rather seriously. Reginald (later referred to as Rexx Vexx) had the ambition that Suren's other friends lacked. He was passionate and undeniably better than the rest of them. He was obsessed with music! He'd sneak out and into clubs underage, slip through venues, and come back with stories about performers and whatnot. Most of the others brushed him off, but Suren always listened. He was curious, and the more he listened, the more he started to long for the spaces he was being told about.
The more Suren listened to Reginald talk about nightlife, the more he became aware of how trapped he felt in his ordinary life. School was suffocating him, and the future he'd talked about with his father was starting to feel unbearable if not impossible. Even the band started to feel like it was lacking, and eventually it dissolved like most teenage projects do with some of the boys losing interest and prioritizing work while others pursued university or apprenticeships for more stable futures. The sooner adulthood crept closer, the more obvious it became that most of them hadn't really been taking any of this seriously, and as their little group fermented off into a million little pieces, Suren and Rexx stayed behind together. Reginald would sneak Suren out and drag him club to club, introducing him to musicians that probably shouldn't have befriended someone so young, and snuck him into slimy, crummy venues where they'd watch performers squished together from wherever they could get a glimpse.
Suren gradually began to change the more he experienced these things; smudged makeup around his eyes, his hair growing out longer, wearing a lot more jewelry than just his usual cruddy bracelets. He liked confusing people. He enjoyed feeling beautiful in ways masculinity back home never really allowed him to explore openly. But his father noticed, of course. They fought sometimes, mostly out of fear rather than hatred. Mr. Bischer was worried constantly that Suren was drifting towards a similar lifestyle to the one his younger brother had led… but even at their worst, his father still loved him. This, he promised one night, would never change. When Reginald suggested they tag along with some of his older friends, join a real band, Suren didn't even try to hide how excited he was. But seventeen wasn't old enough to leave, and Nova wasn't the kind of person who could just disappear in the middle of the night, leave his father wondering what he'd done wrong or if his son was even alive. He wasn't Reginald. He was leaving either way, but Mr. Bischer had to know… he just hoped he'd understand.
The night Suren finally told him, he'd run circles around himself trying to justify the cause, the opportunity, the music…oh…just everything! Mr. Bischer didn't approve… not really, but he didn't stop him. He stood there listening with his arms crossed until eventually he got tired of Suren's rambling and asked him if he really thought that "this" would make him happy. When Suren said yes, his father was easy to resign, and let him go. With rules, of course. Phone numbers. Conditions. And with the understanding that no matter what happened, as long as he was alive, Suren would always have somewhere to come home to.
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Satans pestilential
By the time Satan's Pestilential was formed, Suren and Reginald had been thrown into the culture of underground music neck deep. The band never became truly mainstream, but within the right circles, they had a reputation. Small clubs knew them, punk venues knew them. Hell, they really had something going! Suren might have stayed with them and ridden it all the way until they made it big if he hadn't started to feel like he was disappearing inside it. Somewhere along the way, working with real musicians and spending long nights up with Reginald helped him get good! better than good! He'd been pushing himself harder than ever before with real motivation and real inspiration, and it showed.
He had a voice, but no one gave him an opening to use it. He could play guitar more than filler and background, but that's where he kept getting placed, and he was too sheepish to push his case. He liked this group. He didn't want to make it a problem. But Reginald sure did. One night he pulled Suren aside and told him flat-out that he was wasting himself there, that they both were, in different ways, which Suren originally found pretty cocky. The scene was getting bigger and louder and angrier, which was amazing, but harder to break through, and the two of them would never get their voices and opinions out there if they stayed here. So he pitched Suren something reckless… fuck England. Go to the States. New York City. They could reinvent themselves completely. Suren thought the idea was ridiculous. But he would follow Reginald to the ends of the earth at this point, so they'd gone anyway.
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Vera vandal
The first time Suren had met Vera, he'd been sitting alone at the bar of some downtown venue, waiting for Reginald to come back from where he was trying to charm one of the owners into slipping them into their lineup. Suren had been left to guard their jackets, guitars, and whatever last scraps of dignity they had left when Vera slid into the stool beside him, immediately trying to poach a drink off of him only to clock him as catastrophically broke when he tried to claim Reginald had his wallet. He nearly died of embarrassment, only for her to cut him off and offer to cover his tab if he was willing to entertain her. He took this as flirting ! which he had no problems with. She was a helluva lot taller than he was, but… that wasn't an issue. But she wanted a performance!
He played for her right by the bar between performances, a bit of what he'd done for a Satan's Pestilential song, but eventually he'd boasted his way into showing her some of his current compositions he was in the process of making for himself and Reginald. She didn't seem impressed at first, which had made him really nervous. If he couldn't impress one girl, how was he going to impress others enough to get their word out? But then she gave him some good, corrective advice, even going as far to call his progression cowardly. Later she'd take his guitar and show him some alternatives that were… in fact better. She didn't explain theory or technique much either. She just seemed to know what he was lacking, which he'd never understand.
Vera had swept him off his feet (basically) grabbing him by his wrist and leading him out of the bar with no regard for Reginald or separating the two. She was wonderful. And the most alive he'd felt since arriving in America. She'd laugh and drag him from club to club, rarely sitting in one place for too long. New York at night appeared to bend itself around her. People knew her everywhere they went! Some were easily entranced by her while others would stare in wide berths as if she were a phantom returning from hell to tear down the place. Wherever she'd take him, there was always music, and movement, and booze and drugs he hadn't even noticed.
He'd only met her once for maybe a week. She'd appear out of nowhere and show him illegal warehouse gigs, and bars hidden beneath laundromats. Sometimes she disappeared with strangers for an hour only to reappear with blood under her red chipped nails, which he often pretended not to notice, assuming the complete opposite of what she had probably done. One thing he did notice, however, was how Vera moved through the world with terrifying certainty. She knew exactly who she was and never once apologized for taking up space. Compared to her, Suren felt painfully…unfinished?
When she found out he and Reginald had nowhere to stay, Vera casually dropped them off at an abandoned flat she and "the girls" had apparently squatted in previously. The place barely had power outside of an old generator rigged together in one room, but to Suren and Reginald it felt like a goddamn castle. Then Vera vanished completely for nearly a week without warning. Suren spent those days restless and irritated with himself for caring so much, while Reginald seemed grateful for her but much less wounded, even getting upset with Suren for keeping an eye out for her.
Come her week up, Vera came crashing back into Suren the same way she had the first time, seeming a bit more frazzled, but she stayed longer. She stayed with the boys for a while, locking herself away in one of the rooms during the day and threatening bodily harm if either of them dared to wake her before sunset. Suren once made the mistake of knocking to ask if she wanted a bite, and she'd nearly bit his head off (metaphorically speaking). But when night came, so did Vera. She'd come from her room dressed for clubs and concerts and went right back to tugging them into impossible evenings. Her and Suren started staying up for horrifying stretches of time together, writing music while Reggi slept. Vera pushed him constantly. She ripped apart his lyrics, mocked his hesitation, and accused him of hiding behind irony instead of honesty (which she clearly couldn't stand). She was cruel, in odd and concerning ways, but he hadn't found a liar in her yet. On the occasion she praised something, Suren practically preened beneath it. It was addictive, even the backhanded ones.
Reginald hated watching them together. Vera was clearly unstable and often unreliable. She'd drag Suren around into danger more often than not and never apologized for doing so. This resentment started growing the longer they stayed within each other's spaces, because Reggi had noticed how she was influencing his mate. He was more confident outwardly, dressing louder, his writing had improved, he was more for taking risks than he ever had been before. Vera was challenging Suren in a way Reginald never could. Reggi had introduced Suren to the scene, had dragged him to New York believing in him before anybody else did, yet somehow Vera became the person Suren started creating for??? Suren convinced himself Reginald was simply jealous that Vera preferred him. She never showed much overt affection toward either of them, but she gravitated toward Suren in conversation naturally while treating Reggi more like a two-for-the-price-of-one extra.
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Su’Nova Bisch
By then Reginald had started performing under the name Rexx Vexx, leaning harder into a larger-than-life persona both on and off stage. Suren followed suit, piecing together "Su'Nova Bisch" (sunnova bitch) from bits of his first and middle names as a joke at some of the accents he'd picked up here in America. The two only used those names with each other unless they were fighting. Vera, however, refused to respect either alias. She continued calling them Reginald and Suren, which always made them feel a bit silly.
Things began to change for them. Their names started circulating through smaller clubs. Somebody played one of their recordings on local radio late at night, and they'd gained tiny crowds of regulars who showed up specifically for them. Then, right when it seemed Vera had truly settled into their lives, she vanished again… which absolutely crushed Nova. He and Rexx continued on as a duo for a while, but the absence she left behind lingered everywhere. Then a month or two later, Vera returned, dragging another disaster behind her in the form of Yozzy Yule….
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Yozzy Yule & Richard Rocco
Nova couldn't tell if he loved Yozzy or was annoyed with him during any of their original interactions (which is how he imagined most people felt about him). Yoz was loud and flamboyant… very bragadocious… absolutely convinced he was destined for stardom despite barely being able to pay rent. He often acted like he was already as famous as he strived for and would get offended when people (namely Nova) failed to recognize his supposed importance. Still, the bastard was talented. That was clear, and after hearing that Vera had thought of him and Rexx when she found herself needing to place that talent, he would not let it go to waste.
Yozzy attached himself especially hard to Nova. The two shared a love for dramatic makeup and emotional excess, gradually developing matching stage looks (makeup wise), where Yozzy encouraged Suren's vanity instead of belittling him for it. Their friendship quickly turned affectionate as they partied together constantly, shared clothes, and occasionally other things without much thought to it. One drunken hookup happened almost by accident somewhere between a coke-fueled argument and a three-day binge, but afterward both simply shrugged it off and continued on mostly unchanged
Rexx and Suren grew oddly closer again during this period too, partially because Yozzy's presence forced them to function more like an actual unit rather than the two idiot teens they'd left London as. Rexx became increasingly protective over Suren as the scene got rougher around them. The fights between them worsened & sometimes they screamed at each other over money, gigs, Vera, drugs, or artistic direction only to sit side by side onstage hours later like nothing had happened.
The fourth time Vera resurfaced, she brought Richard Rocco, which Nova was less honored about this time around. He'd had time to sit and fester with the feeling of Vera only coming around to drop off a stray, and now she'd done it again. He worked up the energy to confront her about it, only to be shot down. She bluntly informed him that their progress existed because she'd opened doors for them in the first place, and Suren walked away from the argument feeling humiliated and stupid for ever believing their relationship meant more to her the same way it had for him.
Unfortunately, Richard arrived directly in the aftermath of that fight and mistook Suren's hurt for dislike. In reality, he'd admired Ricky. He'd brought a professionalism the others lacked completely, and his style was very captivating. Once Rexx pointed out that Richard believed himself unwanted, Suren made a genuine effort to fix things. Richard is now the keyboardist for their scrappy ass band and has grown the closest to Yozzy out of everyone.
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The final major time Vera intervened directly in their career, she handed them something massive. A legendary touring act had abruptly lost their opener after some drug-related implosion, and Vera somehow (nobody ever figured out how) secured the slot for them. No management, no label pull, no explanation. Suddenly they were performing before crowds ten times larger than anything they'd ever seen before and absolutely killing it. Labels started circling them. Some magazine artists started obsessing over Nova's pirate-ish look, as well as a bunch of producers attempting to sniff around.
Vera disappeared again the second the explosion truly started. After that, she became more rumor than person. It seems Nova had just been her first of many little projects. She appeared right before careers skyrocketed or collapsed entirely, which is how she became almost a myth amongst the music industry. Some people swore she was cursed, while others considered her a patron saint. Paparazzi photographs of her always came out strangely blurred or distorted no matter the camera, and she was never where people expected her to be. Nova spent years trying unsuccessfully to track her down again while the band climbed higher and higher without her to no luck.
Then, years later, after chart success and touring and MTV deals, Nova found himself sitting in some miserable little diner in a nowhere town in California after a screaming match with Yozzy over life on the road. He was desperate, and Vera appeared beside him like no time had passed at all. Despite everything he'd become, Suren still immediately felt nineteen again… but Vera always either wants or leaves something when she comes and goes, doesn't she?
He just didn’t expect for her to bring his one way ticket to hell alongside a multi-century six year old.
As Vanessa Ellis, just outside of Duluth, Minnesota, in what could be described as the perfect suburban family, year 1944. Her family had a lovely house with freshly hand-painted fences and neatly trimmed hedges…everything one could possibly want! They were very comfortable and helped host neighborhood barbecues often.
Her father, William, worked as a local politician and was a highly respected public figure in their hometown. He cared a lot about his reputation and appearances, but Vanessa never went entirely unloved by him. He bought her dresses and proudly introduced her to neighbors, keeping framed photographs of her and her mother displayed throughout the house... But he didn't know what to do with Vanessa outside of showing her off. Her mother, Katarina, had immigrated from Eastern Europe through a mail-order marriage arranged years before Vanessa's birth. She'd been quiet even before marriage, thanks to limited English and the lack of friends or family after moving halfway across the world; she withdrew further after Vanessa was born. Sometime during Vanessa's infancy, following postpartum depression, Katarina underwent a lobotomy, leaving her a part of Vanessa's life but emotionally unreachable.
Vanessa, like most children, got to the stage where she'd try to mirror anything her parents would do as part of the natural learning experience. Sadly, unlike most children, she rarely received anything in return. When she'd cry and look to her mother for help or reassurance, Katarina would stare blankly past her. When she laughed over her toys or stuffed animals or something goofy she had done, she was greeted by a silent house and stone faces.
She'd tried bringing drawings of her family to her father and telling him stories about whatever she had made up while making her toys interact, and climbing up into his lap while he read newspapers. Every time she tried to connect with him, however, he'd give her an absent nod or a distracted smile before returning to his own silence. Over time, Vanessa stopped expecting reactions, and her father did nothing to fill the gap. Raised in an era that had high expectations for composed men in society, he saw large displays of emotion as dramatic and something to be corrected.
It wasn't until one afternoon when she'd scraped her knee badly enough to start sobbing on the sidewalk that neighbors finally started rushing toward her all at once.
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Fixation..
Vanessa had made a very interesting discovery! People outside of her home seemed to follow a very predictable set of rules in response to another's emotions. If she were to cry, most adults would become more lenient with her. She liked the way people would look directly at her during those times, reaching toward her and softening their tones in an attempt to soothe her, and for those few seconds she was crying, she'd occupy all of their attention. While if she were to scream loudly enough, eventually someone would give her whatever it was she wanted just to get her to shut the fuck up. Sometimes adults would yell at her or scold her, and her stomach would drop into her feet, but the silence afterwards always felt worse…because at least when they were yelling at her, they would look her way. And if she were to hold eye contact with someone for an uncomfortable amount of time, eventually the other person would be forced to look away.
This was amazing for someone like Vanessa…she was so starved for acknowledgement, just for it to be as simple as pushing a button on a machine. However, she couldn't really understand how people could sob over words one day and laugh over them the next. Everyone was so inconsistent, so she stopped being all that interested in how those reactions felt for the other person; she just cared that she could drag it out of them at all. Negative attention became infinitely preferable to no attention at all, and was much easier to generate than consistent positive attention. She wasn't as cruel as she would grow to be as a child; she just desperately wanted to prove that she had an effect on the people around her, since she obviously didn't have it with her parents.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
By the time she started school…
She was already viewing people differently than most children her age. She wasn't especially interested in making friends for the sake of friends, but she was interested to see if kids worked on this same level of predictability as the adults had. But the children in her grade were loud, impulsive, emotional little things that would react how they felt the moment they felt it. She was very self-alienated at this point because she didn't understand how they could cry over small things only to forgive each other by recess and fight again, while she would feel things a lot deeper and hold onto the feeling for long periods of time.
On only her second day of school, another girl, Lorraine, introduced herself. Lorraine couldn't have been more different from Vanessa if she tried. She'd cry to teachers if she felt like it and bounded up to their classmates with the pure-hearted hope of becoming friends with other kids, and was very open with her feelings. And every morning when Vanessa would get dropped off for school, Lorraine would come running toward her before class with a hug, excitedly telling her about whatever happened the evening before after school had ended.
Someone had been giving her attention without her having to coax it out of them. Lorraine made sure their desks sat close and lit up like a lightbulb whenever she'd see Vanessa across the hall… and it healed something in tiny Vanessa, I think. Lorraine became the center of Vanessa's world very quickly. That was her friend. Vanessa would follow Lorraine everywhere when Lorraine wouldn't follow her. She didn't realize how lonely she would've been without her until Lorraine had to visit the doctors every once in a while, leaving Vanessa alone in class.
Inevitably, when you put a bunch of small children in one room for hours every day a week, they will start fighting over stupid things. One afternoon, another student had upset Lorraine over one of the toys they had been given for an inside recess day. Lorraine, being very emotional, had started crying, and Vanessa had only watched. She noticed how easily children could make one another feel things while adults were more difficult and often outright lied about how they felt. And if she could push one in the right direction, they would become angry, or jealous, or embarrassed immediately. Vanessa started involving herself in a lot of the other kids' friendships. She'd repeat things back to others that one student had said, even telling Lorraine another girl said she hadn't wanted her around. None of what Vanessa had said was a complete lie, but it had hurt Lorraine's feelings. Then she'd see her reaction.
Lorraine, who was terrified of losing the one friend who always seemed closest to her, slowly stopped reaching out to everyone else. One by one, Vanessa watched her classmates drift away from Lorraine and invest in their own little groups until it was just the two of them spending all their time together. Vanessa truthfully never thought of it as isolating Lorraine or stealing her friendships away. In her mind, Lorraine's friendships were bound to end anyways…she was watching them end all the time as everyone started to grow up and form their own interests and identities. This was just assuring that Lorraine could come back to her, because in no world would she see herself leaving Lorraine. It never occurred to her that separating naturally was a part of life while being prompted to separate was not.
For all of Vanessa's behavioral issues, there was one line no one else was allowed to cross. She could tease Lorraine all she wanted, but nobody else could. When a boy had mocked Lorraine after she fainted during class one day, Vanessa had shoved him so hard he'd cracked his mouth against the edge of his desk. Blood was pouring down his chin, and the classroom had erupted into screaming, and crying. Lorraine herself burst into tears, horrified by what she'd seen, while Vanessa stood there confused on why everyone was so upset. He'd started it. He had hurt the person she cared about. Why was it so bad that she'd stopped him? Wasn't that what people were supposed to do?
After Lorraine's frequent fainting spells began sending her to the nurse's office, Vanessa developed a habit of skipping class to sit with her. Lorraine would beg her to go back before she got into trouble, but Vanessa couldn't care less about that. She'd wave her off and climb into the empty cot beside her to get comfortable, handing over stolen cracker packets from the nurse's drawer whenever she decided Lorraine hadn't eaten enough. Sometimes she'd stuff them into her pockets on their way out. Crackers weren't the only thing she stole she'd given Lorraine colorful barrettes from department stores and bracelets and keychains she'd snatched off other students' backpacks. Anything she thought Lorraine might like. And by middle school, it was hard to find one girl without running into the other.
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Adolescence
Vanessa wound up physically maturing some time earlier than other girls her age. Her father surprisingly handled the conversation with her with far more grace than most men of the time likely would've. Puberty, he insisted, was simply biology and unavoidable. There was nothing shameful about becoming a young woman, and anyone who suggested otherwise wasn't worth listening to. Which ended up being the most emotionally intelligent conversation the two of them ever exchanged.
Unfortunately, mid-century suburbia had other ideas. At first it was boys staring, then girls glaring, even some of her teachers lingered a little too long when speaking to her. Older boys in the town, despite the fact that she didn't know them. Most girls in Vanessa's position would've felt embarrassed, frightened, or even objectified. Being as young as she was, she certainly should've. But instead, she'd started noticing new patterns. People treated more subjectively "attractive" girls differently, and she didn't enjoy the attention itself, but she did like what the attention allowed her to do. It was leverage! And it gave her a whole new row of buttons to start pushing.
She started standing closer to people during conversation, smiling at boys she had absolutely no interest in because she learned how far that could get her on the social train with them. She never flirted out of attraction, but she did end up rather flirtatious out of experimentation. And as intoxicating as this newfound influence became, it came with its own consequences whether or not she wanted to acknowledge them. Vanessa was still very much a child, that couldn't be changed no matter how mature adults insisted she looked. Her attention would only grow, and while Vanessa rarely felt afraid of this, she'd slowly begun to recognize that being seen in this light was a permanent state of existence. Which became another reason to avoid going home.
The distance between Vanessa and her father only grew the older she'd gotten. She was no longer a polite little girl he could introduce to neighbors. She skipped church more often than she'd go, argued openly with adults twice her age, and stayed out after curfew no matter how hard he tried to wrangle her in. She was difficult. Every year it'd become more and more impossible to fit Vanessa into the picture-perfect family he'd so carefully crafted himself. He'd started giving up on her. Instead, Vanessa spent more and more evenings climbing through Lorraine's bedroom window when her mother would work night shifts. The two girls would stay awake until dawn, with Lorraine laying on her back on the floor and Vanessa lying on her bed, feet kicking up in the air as she painted her nails beneath the glow of Lorraine's pretty stained glass bedside lamp. They'd share Vanessa's stolen candy and occasionally dance to Lorraine's mother's records while the rest of the neighborhood slept.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Oh Lorraine…
Whenever Lorraine's panic attacks would get to her, she'd still find a way to open up that window and let Vanessa in beside her. Vanessa was never particularly good at consoling others (she didn't know what to do with people's feelings because they weren't hers) but she'd sit the both of them down on the bathroom floor and wrap Lorraine in her arms. Then she'd start rambling and cursing out random words in no particular order, just whatever came into her mind, until Lorraine would slow back down, typically in confusion at how ridiculous she was. She could at least understand that silence would hurt Lorraine more. She'd know that better than anyone.
There was one winter where the two of them had stayed out longer than they should have, and by the time they got to the bus stop to try to get home before the worst of it, Lorraine's hands had gone completely numb. Vanessa was furious. She'd grabbed hold of the both of them and spent nearly twenty minutes rubbing the warmth back into her fingers so aggressively you'd think Lorraine had gotten cold on purpose. She'd told Lorraine she had to be the dumbest person she'd ever met, repeatedly, while refusing to stop until the bus got there. Lorraine, while watching her, had eventually laughed through chattering teeth and pointed out that Vanessa wasn't wearing any gloves either. But Vanessa didn't get cold. At least that's what she claimed, but in reality she'd just hated the idea of admitting she was worried about Lori.
As time went on, their friendship blurred into something neither of them knew exactly what to call. Maybe in another lifetime they would've called it love, but instead they had only remained inseparable. Vanessa loved Lorraine more deeply than she'd ever loved another human being… which was… the problem.
The peace of it was driving Vanessa insane. She was restless. She found herself testing the relationship compulsively, searching and clawing for proof that Lorraine would love her to the same degree. She flirted outrageously with boys she couldn't stand just to watch Lorraine's face fall. After arguments, she'd make herself disappear for hours, sometimes days, ignoring every phone call while imagining Lorraine searching desperately for her. She didn't particularly want to scare Lorraine, but she wanted her to get angry. To yell at her and finally tell her that she'd gone too far. Instead of getting upset with Vanessa, Lori would cry and forgive her every time. Most people could've considered Lorraine's unconditional forgiveness a gift, but it was unbearable!
If Lorraine just took and took whatever Vanessa threw at her without pushing back, how would Vanessa know she truly mattered? It felt like rejection, and without a reaction to her behavior… were they even anything at all? Vanessa pushed harder, and looking back years later, Vera would never admit a lot of it was rooted in separation anxiety, but that's exactly what it was. She didn't know how to ask Lorraine not to leave her, so she spent most of their teen years trying to force Lorraine to prove she wouldn't.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Lorraine leaves…
By the time high school rolled around, Lorraine's mother had taken notice of the changes in her daughter that she couldn't ignore anymore. Lorraine had become painfully withdrawn and anxious around other teenagers her age, and almost entirely dependent on Vanessa's company. They would move several states away, leaving Vanessa in that shithole town. Surely Lorraine wasn't moving because her mother was taking up a new job several states away… Lorraine was abandoning her.
Vanessa had argued, begged, and screamed in Lorraine's face, eventually stopped talking to her altogether before crawling back like nothing had happened. Every conversation became another opportunity to test Lorraine one last time. She'd even asked Lorraine to run off with her, but Lorraine was too cowardly to do anything before finishing her schooling. Lorraine had cried and apologized for things that weren't her fault, even promising they would write letters and visit one another before outright telling Vanessa she loved her.
Forgiveness had always felt strangely empty to Vanessa. Anger had always proved that someone cared enough to fight for her, but Lorraine was too patient, too kind. Instead of reassuring Vanessa, it only deepened the dreadful feeling that she was impossible to truly love or understand. And when Lorraine finally left, Vanessa lost it. She fell into a deep depression for the first week and refused to attend anything church… school… her father's events… then she'd be lurched into a restless burst, throwing herself into as many new situations and relationships as possible. Every boyfriend became another experiment for her; they were much easier to provoke than she'd found. Eventually they would give her the emotional confirmation she couldn't generate herself.
Arguments with her father became nightly occurrences. She was ruining his reputation, his perfect family! And she was becoming impossible to explain away to others. She skipped school and stayed out till sunrise, stealing openly and developing an explosive temper that embarrassed him terribly in public. Following an argument with a teenage boyfriend, Vanessa had threatened to kill herself. She didn't want to die, and she had no intention of going through with it all the way, but she wanted to see if he would stop her, if he would choose her over himself. Instead of reaching her boyfriend, it had reached her father, and to him it didn't sound much like a cry for attention but a scandal waiting to happen.
Within weeks, arrangements had been made. Vanessa was withdrawn from school and admitted to St. Dymphna's Psychiatric Institution under the recommendation that she required long-term psychiatric treatment.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
St. Dymphna's psychiatric institution…
Fifteen years old. Vanessa Ellis disappears from public life. Emotional disturbance, violent behavior, delinquency, and increasingly concerning instability. Throughout this stage she'd accumulated a few different diagnoses that really did reflect the limitations of mid-century psychiatry.
• Sociopathic personality disturbance
• Severe depression
• Minimal brain dysfunction (which would now be recognized as ADHD)
The institute did very little to understand why Vanessa behaved the way she did. Most of the staff viewed Vanessa as manipulative and cunning and often dismissed what she had to say. Ironically, despite the abusive medical system,St. Dymphna's was the safest environment Vanessa had ever experienced. Unlike the outside world, it ran completely on routine. They fed her at the same time every day, the staff followed very predictable schedules, and rules were written down and hung on the wall for consequences to be expected. For someone who'd spent her entire childhood trying to understand others, the institute was a giant behavior lab…and she thrived!
Within months, Vanessa had mapped out the social hierarchy between the patients and between the staff. She also learned how much she could break the rules before anyone would start intervening. Vanessa, although having little respect for rules, couldn't care less about acting out just to prove she could, but she liked proving that she understood the system better than anyone trying to enforce it.
Vanessa gravitated towards girls who were prone to panic, or were lonely and desperate to talk to someone. Many of them found her magnetic. She was funny and energetic and seemed entirely unconcerned with social cues or judgments. Girls followed her mostly for entertainment, which she loved. If people were willing to follow her into whatever fire she'd lead everyone to, it confirmed she existed! Some girls became more of something to toy with and use to enable herself they were mentally vulnerable and easy to manipulate into breaking rules or acting against their own interest just because she'd suggested it! Others genuinely amused her, and she'd favor them.
Victoria Ediel was one of those people. Unlike most of the other girls in the ward, Victoria didn't idolize Vanessa; instead she'd challenge her and sometimes even butt heads. The two quickly became inseparable, racing wheelchairs down empty hallways after lights out and sneaking into unused offices to prank the staff telephones. They'd steal cigarettes and treat the institution like their own personal playground. Most of their shenanigans ended with the both of them getting dragged back into their separate rooms and effectively put into a time out… strangely enough, it was one of the healthiest friendships Vanessa had ever experienced. She felt little need to control Vic because she was someone to play with, and it was really nice to act her age again even if they were obnoxious.
The institution quickly realized Vanessa had an unsuspecting influence over the other girls. New admissions that arrived scared out of their minds would become extremely loyal to her within days. Even their cooperative patients became harder to get a grasp on after spending time with her. A lot of them would start parroting Vanessa's worldview, and it became difficult to tell who came up with the bright idea of what. Eventually the staff started separating her from the general ward after incidents they described as "acting out."
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Isolation…
It became routine for her. At first she was confined for a day or two, then a handful of days. There was a big rule about having to ask to return to the group, so once she'd remained voluntarily in isolation for nearly a week to see how long it would take for someone to come looking for her… which… no one did.
Eventually one of the guards she'd become friendly with opened the door to inform her that she could either return to the ward or be transferred to maximum security… so she returned to the ward. Mostly because maximum security sounded boring.
Vanessa had managed to escape St. Dymphna's countless times, which made it more fun. It had become so frequent that staff eventually stopped sounding surprised over the intercom whenever she disappeared. In their defense, she rarely made it far (a six-foot-four platinum blonde woman was difficult to hide in rural Minnesota). Especially one who refused to keep her mouth shut. Sometimes she'd manage to talk guards into looking the other way, and one time she'd convinced an ambulance driver she belonged in the passenger seat long enough to make it halfway across town before he'd realized she'd never been discharged. She'd be hauled back kicking, screaming, laughing, insulting every officer involved, effectively throwing a giant temper tantrum big enough to embarrass everyone except herself.
The irony really wasn't lost on Vanessa. She knew she had nowhere to go, no apartment or family to sneak back into, and she couldn't get a job if she'd wanted to. Sometimes she'd spend an hour sitting behind an abandoned gas station smoking stolen cigarettes before the police found her. Other times she'd just walk, and walk, and walk, and walk, and walk with nowhere in mind. She didn't care where she ended up; she just liked that for a few hours no one knew where she was, and to Vanessa that feeling of being left alone was worth the eventual restraints. She didn't like being told she couldn't leave.
Some of their nurses transferred off down to California with how many growing institutions were being established around that time, and new patients were admitted while others got discharged. Vanessa never got discharged because she never seemed to make any progress. The institute taught her nothing. If anything, it enabled her. She'd be punished temporarily for breaking rules, but there was little real backlash, and it only proved her point right that reactions could be prompted if she wanted them to be.
During these years she'd developed strong relationships with some of the nurses (Penny Adler namely) and eventually Dr. Julien Mercer. Mercer crossed professional boundaries and began an affair with Vanessa as his patient. When this inevitably came to light, he lost his career. Vanessa learned absolutely nothing from that experience and found it hilarious if anything. He lost his career while she'd lost nothing but a game. After all, he'd been the one person in the room who was supposed to know better.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
By this point…
Vanessa had convinced herself she'd never see Lorraine again. The letters slowed, then stopped. Birthdays came and went while seasons changed outside of St. Dymphna's barred windows. Vanessa had settled further into her little routine… which was good for her… kind of. She'd make new friends and burn through them twice as fast. Her father stopped pretending to be interested in visiting her, and she'd long stopped expecting anyone from her old life to come back.
Then one afternoon Lorraine walked through those front doors. Moving away supposedly hadn't cured her, or whatever it was the point her mother had tried to make. Years of untreated anxiety apparently consumes you, and it had eaten Lori alive. She’d apparently reached her breaking point shortly after her high school graduation, leaving her mother with little choice but to admit her to the nearest psychiatric facility. By some cruel coincidence, it was St. Dymphna's.
And the moment Vanessa saw Lorraine across the admission ward, every ounce of resentment she'd spent years building up collapsed beneath her relief. Relief that they were no longer separated by states, or letters, or even their parents. This naturally terrified everyone around them. They gravitated back towards each other in the common rooms, sat beside each other during meals making their own fucked-up version of catching up. They'd spend hours beneath their blankets after lights out despite the nurses' constant attempts to separate them. Without realizing it, they had begun feeding every insecurity the other possessed, so much so that years later, Lorraine would write in her journal that
"somewhere along the way, loving each other became impossible to separate from hurting each other."
Their arguments became louder than they'd ever been as children. They'd wake other patients up with screaming matches before apologizing to each other hours later. Some nights they clung desperately to one another in tears while others ended with the staff pulling them apart before someone was seriously hurt. During one of their worst arguments, Vanessa had struck Lorraine hard enough across the face to leave a bruise along her cheekbone. Orderlies had to physically restrain Vanessa while Lorraine herself had turned on them screaming like a madwoman for them to let Vanessa go.
For Vanessa, love had become synonymous with reaction. Lorraine would give everyone else a reaction except for her, it seemed. Even still, Vanessa wonders to herself years later as Vera Vandal how Lorraine had felt in those moments. Lorraine was kind enough to comfort Vanessa during her meltdowns. She'd sit beside her through panic attacks and hold her head while she cried. She'd even sneak into isolation whenever she could get away with it and spend hours reassuring Vanessa that she wasn't leaving again. But when the storm finally passed, and Vanessa would pick back up (even behaving herself just to get more hours with Lorraine) Lori would drift back towards the rest of the ward. She'd join card games in the common room and attend group therapy without her.
Vanessa couldn't understand this pattern. To her, it felt like Lorraine only wanted her when she could literally feel her mind splitting into halves. Lorraine, meanwhile, couldn't understand why Vanessa seemed to unravel every time she gave her room to breathe. More than once she'd quietly admitted that she missed the old Vanessa, the girl she'd met years ago, and that Vanessa was easier when she stayed calm.
Vanessa couldn't make sense of it. If Lorraine loved her more when she was calm, why did she always seem to leave once she'd calmed down? The contradiction consumed her. So, for once, she tried to do what Lorraine wanted. Instead of following her through the ward, Vanessa resumed her relationship with Victoria. Vanessa thought she'd finally gotten it right, but that night she'd found Lorraine curled up beneath her blankets, crying so hard she could barely speak because she thought Vanessa ‘didn't need her anymore’. Vanessa didn't bother consoling her. She'd just stared at her for a long time trying to understand what the fuck Lorraine had wanted. She'd done exactly what Lorraine had asked. She'd given her space. She'd stayed calm. And somehow… she'd still gotten it wrong.
When the doctors did succeed in separating the two, every fifteen or twenty minutes, Lorraine would quietly slip out of bed and pad barefoot across the hallway. Vanessa rarely slept, and when she was occasionally forced into her bed she'd stare at walls and ceilings out of spite, making eye contact with their check-in nurses to rub it in their faces that she was above sleep. She'd catch Lorraine creaking her door open just to get a peek of her, before closing it again. This admittedly had gotten on Vanessa's nerves and had been the root of one of their arguments. She'd blown up in Lorraine's face and asked her why she kept doing it, only to get Lori looking confused in response. She had just wanted to make sure Vanessa was still there.
Despite Lorraine being a cause for better behavior out of Vanessa, she'd still earn her way into seclusion. And whenever Vanessa was placed in seclusion, Lorraine would spend the first hour sitting outside insisting Vanessa hated being alone. By the second hour she started knocking. And banging on the door in a panic after getting no response from her. Vanessa had gone through a particularly bad episode and had to sit through the mind-numbing sound of Lorraine fighting staff members away from her door before inevitably being drugged away screaming her head off.
They had their fun. Lorraine started picking up on the less vulgar things Vanessa would say and copied the way she'd roll her hospital sweaters up to her elbows. Vanessa would spend a few hours a day combing Lorraine's hair with her fingers absentmindedly while they talked about their therapy sessions. One night Vanessa had snuck into Lorraine's room between checks and curled into her bed beside her. Lorraine rested her head against Vanessa's shoulder and asked her to promise she wouldn't get better without her. She didn't want Vanessa to get discharged and stuck out there by herself while Lorraine was in here… and Vanessa wouldn't.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Displacement….
St. Dymphna's had always been overcrowded, and by the early 1960s the administration had begun discharging patients who were considered stable enough to continue elsewhere. Lorraine was one of these patients.
Vanessa hadn't manipulated anyone into signing paperwork, or argued with doctors, or bullied nurses into changing their minds on Lori. She had simply gotten better. Lori was really good about attending therapy, taking her medication, learning coping mechanisms everything Vanessa seemed incapable of doing. So after roughly a year inside St. Dymphna's, Lorraine walked through the hospital's front doors as a free woman.
Vanessa had watched her leave from the second-story windows. She didn't have as bad of an external reaction as the staff had anticipated. She didn't scream or try to break out and run after her. She didn't even cry… Vanessa was starting to come to terms with a very devastating and untrue realization… that Lorraine didn't need her.
Lorraine still visited, once, or twice. She'd loved her deeply. Still, Vanessa had spent years convincing herself that control and necessity were the roots of love. Lorraine's quick recovery dismantled that belief in one single afternoon. Suddenly every manipulation, every possessive outburst, every desperate attempt to keep Lorraine looked less like devotion in Vanessa’s eyes and more like… an illness. And Vanessa was forced to consider that she might actually be the problem.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Without Lorraine…
The hospital became very quiet and unpleasant for Vanessa, which was weird for her. Things had been so good in her eyes until Lorraine had stepped back in. She no longer found enjoyment in her sick little games, and any reactions she could pull out of the other girls like Adeline and Elise felt empty and unappealing. She spiraled. For a while her escape attempts became increasingly reckless and poorly planned. She started lying more just for the sake of it and stole anything small enough to disappear into her pockets. She'd pick fights with patients who had never wronged her and relentlessly bullied girls who reminded her too much of Lorraine. Guards found themselves restraining her more often than ever before. Vanessa wasn't trying to gain anything anymore. She wasn't trying to prove to herself through others that she'd been real. She was trying to feel something other than her own heart dulling out.
Doctors declared the sudden decline worsened instability, and after contact with her father, Vanessa's treatments intensified. Electroconvulsive therapy was the go-to. Whether it helped her or hurt her worse would depend on who you asked, but Vanessa remembered it as terrifying. That had been the first time she'd ever found herself truly and deeply afraid of what was going to happen to her. The treatments left her exhausted and extremely disconnected from herself. She'd lay staring at the ceiling for hours after, and when she'd get released to the other girls she'd find her ability to predict others and stay three steps ahead slip through her bony, shaking fingers. She couldn't even predict herself. She'd dissociate for days at a time where she'd lose conversations. Sometimes she'd hear stories about things she'd supposedly done and struggle to believe that was true. Ironically… it made her want to get better… or… someone did.
Lorraine visited once. It lasted less than an hour. She'd looked at Vanessa, and Vanessa couldn't describe the look if she'd tried. Vanessa behaved a bit more after that. She'd attended group sessions without an argument and did her best to follow more directions. She tried to apologize to some of the staff she'd spent years tormenting, and even Nancy Belt, who had dreaded working her ward, had to admit she'd seemed different. She had hope for herself more importantly, one of the few things she'd written in her journal had been:
"I just… needed an out. Things have been nicer. I've been nicer. Nice enough for people to start treating me kindly, but it's not enough for the staff to be happy with me."
Vanessa had allowed herself to imagine a future. She'd wanted to live with Lorraine after she got discharged, but if Lori didn't want to live with her… that was okay. Really. She and Victoria had already begun talking about finding an apartment together if they were discharged around the same time. Vanessa had planned on sitting down with Lorraine and having an honest conversation with her. She'd wanted to ask her, and tell her that she'd understood, and that she wasn't angry anymore. And that maybe… they could learn how to love each other without destroying one another. She waited for Lorraine's next visit.
Then she waited some more. Weeks stretched into months without a letter, or a phone call, or a visit. Vanessa had tried her best to be good and wait it out, convincing herself that Lorraine was just busy, and that the letters had gotten lost, and then eventually she'd given up. She destroyed herself on the mindset that if getting better still got her left behind, then what was the point of making any effort at all? Any good behavior she'd had sunk to a low with her mental state. Her little pedestal she'd set Lori up on came tumbling back on her, and she'd orchestrated another escape. She'd take Adeline with her. They'd slip through the hospital grounds laughing the entire way as if they were simply two teens sneaking out past curfew.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Vera vandal
Adeline and Vanessa never made it very far. That had usually been the case for Vanessa's escapes, but somewhere along the road they'd come across two other women wandering the night: Andrea and Amber. When Addie had panicked and tried to run, blood had washed across the concrete too fast for Vanessa to comprehend what had even happened. One second Adeline was screaming, the next she was crumpled on the ground beneath hands that belonged to no human, and the fight was over as quickly as it had begun. Adeline had always been a weaker girl.
Vanessa watched, and found herself more irritated than anything. She had brought Adeline out with her to freedom, to explore the world just for her to be taken at the snap of a finger. The realization disturbed her more than Adeline's cruel end itself, and she immediately started rationalizing the feeling away. Adeline had talked about dying constantly. She'd wanted to long before they scaled that fence and probably would've continued once the adrenaline wore out. Maybe this had been what Adeline had been looking for all along. Maybe now she had what she'd wanted. Years later Vera would open up to Starr with unusual honesty.
"I didn't want Adeline to die. But I couldn't bring myself to care that much either. Adeline was fun because she was so easy to mess with… and she'd wanted to die anyway. I don't know. It felt like she needed to."
Vanessa had expected to be the next down that night. It wasn't like she could run any further. She had nothing and no one to go back to. But instead… Andrea had taken interest in her. Vanessa was covered in Adeline's blood, staring blankly at her body in what internally was… a mess… but Andrea saw someone who'd already detached themself from ordinary human relationships.
Andrea had brought Vanessa before Billy, who saw little reason to refuse Andrea's request. Vanessa had no future beyond St. Dymphna's walls, no family searching for her, and very little obvious attachment to her human life. Vanessa had died alone as someone would expect of someone who'd lead their life with such a dog-eat-dog mentality… but Vera Vandal had been born from it.
· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Immortality….
To be young! To be beautiful! To live forever! It had all been lies. Lies, lies, lies. Whatever psychological wounds Vanessa carried into her death remained exactly as they were. She may have been trapped in the body of a now twenty-year-old, but Vera still had Vanessa curled up into a ball inside of her body frozen, a scared little girl forever. No matter how deep Vera tried to bury her, Vanessa still desperately wanted proof that she mattered, but she'd never have the opportunity to become anything else than she was. Every unhealthy coping mechanism Vanessa relied on became immortal alongside Vera, who would spend centuries searching for reactions and demanding control and mistaking possession for love. She'd sabotage all the connections she'd make, and would never truly let Lorraine go.
The '70s were perfect for Vanessa. The Belles had been drifting through New York, occupying abandoned apartment buildings. Vera and Amber had found that most punk clubs stayed open until sunrise, strangers could disappear every night without much notice, and the city offered exactly the kind of anonymity Vanessa had searched for in her escapes. Vera embraced this. For weeks at a time she'd disappear from the colony without warning, returning only after exhausting every bar corner and party she could find. She drank like a sailor because she could no longer die from it. She slept with whoever amused her and picked fights because who could hurt her? Billy's rules became little more than suggestions to ignore when it was convenient to Vanessa. Only a fool would think Vanessa had been liberated by her death. She was still playing out the same emotional patterns she had as Vanessa. The only difference now is that she possessed an immortal body that allowed her to repeat them without any consequences.
But when Vera returned to the colony after disappearing for weeks, nobody seemed to care. Nobody looked at her. They hadn't even bothered to acknowledge her when she tried talking. She'd insult them and joke and complain. She slammed doors and mocked them all, even shattering glass against one of the walls. Turns out Billy had ordered everyone not to react to Vera's return, knowing that it would torture her. Eventually she broke under it and screamed for at least one of them to say something to her. Andrea specifically seemed tired of Vanessa, often targeting her through the hivemind, invading her thoughts and pulling out her worst memories as a way to punish her.
Whenever Vera would begin to relax, she'd be swamped with imagery of Lorraine crying, of the isolation room, of her mother's blank stare, and the feeling of being restrained and strapped down against her will. As shaken as it would leave Vera, it was never as humiliating as Billy pulling the group together to list off every reckless thing she had done before declaring that if she wanted to behave like a stray dog, she could eat like one — last. For the next week they had denied Vera copious amounts of blood, and she had only just barely survived, reminded exactly of where she stands now. This of course only made her angrier, she was immortal now and no one could put her down all the way.
There had been a point when Billy had withdrawn Vera's connection to the hivemind, leaving her in complete silence. She could still feel them, and they were all around her in whatever room they were staying in at the time, but they had shut her out. It was eerily reminiscent of her childhood home and her days in isolation, and after a few days, Vera stopped talking altogether. After a week, Amber found her sitting on the bathroom floor, makeup and blood streaming down her face. Amber had gone to ask her something, but Billy had intervened. And when she did, Vanessa had broken through to ask if she could come back, having reverted to the little girl who stayed in seclusion waiting for someone to tell her she was allowed to return.
Immortality was a load of shit. She'd only flee again to rid herself of the need crawling under her skin. And somewhere beneath the neon lights of downtown Manhattan, she'd found something much more appealing than letting others triumph over her.
· ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Nova
Wip city m litterally falling asleep on my keyboard
The first time Vera met Suren, he was sitting alone at a scarred wooden bar, watching over two threadbare jackets while his best friend, Reginald, unsuccessfully tried convincing a club owner to give their little band a Tuesday night slot. They had arrived from London with little more than a battered guitar, a bass, and a few clothes. Every basement held musicians better than they were. Still, Vera noticed him. She slipped into the empty stool beside him without asking, stole a cigarette from the pack in front of him, and asked if he planned on buying her a drink. Suren laughed awkwardly and admitted he could barely afford his own. She rolled her eyes, paid the bartender herself, and told him he could repay her by entertaining her. When he admitted he didn't have his guitar, she simply shrugged and told him to explain it to her.
So he did.
Vera had always preferred musicians. Songs were honest in ways people rarely were. A person could insist they were fine while trembling, smiling, lying through their teeth. Music couldn't. Every chord carried intention. She didn't know the proper terminology. She couldn't have explained diminished sevenths or modal interchange if someone held a gun to her head, but she knew when something felt true. She'd spent a lifetime studying people's emotional reactions. Music was simply the only thing that reacted the same way every time.
General rough “summarization” overview yap for viggooooo yayyy!
Viggo grew up…
in the Bywater district of New Orleans as the only child of Nannette and Imran Malik. His family was working class, with Viggo's father working the docks during the days while Nannette picked up any club or bar gig she could. Their income was extremely inconsistent, but it kept them and their thin-walled home afloat and warm.
Viggo was a very quiet, mousey type of boy, the spitting image of his beautiful and social mother, but he could often be found hiding behind her legs as she worked. He was overly sensitive and easily overwhelmed by most things; even when very little was going on around him, he struggled heavily with keeping himself calm… and was just overall, generally, definitely different from other little boys his age. Very high stress, constantly receiving a lot of negative sensory input from all over the place.
Despite the challenge, Nannette raised him with remarkable patience. Taking care of a child with psychological issues in the '60s was definitely not a simple thing to do, and it wasn't always enjoyable… still, she persistently tried her best to meet Viggo where he was (which many adults around them found indulgent) explaining everything to him, giving him verbal reminders that she loved him, and that nothing going on in that perfect little head of his could ever change how she felt about him. He wasn't a burden, he would never be, and that kind of free reassurance is something he rarely if ever finds again in his lifetime.
Despite this, many children during his childhood viewed Viggo as spoilt due to his mother's willingness to adjust to his needs, unlike their own. This, paired with Viggo's reluctance to leave his mother's work areas (which were mostly adult-occupied), kept him from making many friends. After her work, however, Viggo enjoyed pretending to be asleep. After long nights at his mother's clubs, he'd curl up on a booth while she finished cleaning up and said goodnight to her coworkers, and by the time Imran came to walk them back, he'd practiced lying completely still so that he could hear his parents bicker over who had to carry him home.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
For most of his childhood…
Viggo was homeschooled by his mother. Her reading lessons came from club menus, flyers, and handwritten notes, basically anything she could get her hands on while continuing to work full time. through budgeting tips and counting spare change, sorting through earnings at the kitchen table while his mother cooked. Most importantly to Viggo, she taught him principles: mean what you say, keep your promises, respect others, and protect those with less power than you. Years later, Viggo fails to realize how deeply his mother's lectures had become the foundation of his morality, or how much his time with the Lost Boys would eventually alter it.
When he wasn't shadowing his mother, Viggo would occasionally accompany Imran to the docks on slower work days. Most of the time he was instructed to stay out of the way and not touch anything expensive, which naturally resulted in him touching nearly everything…Imran would pretend to be annoyed while answering endless questions about where things came from and where they were going. Viggo tried to think back on these moments as a teenager, but forgot most of the answers he'd received. Other times Imran would take him fishing. Neither of them was particularly good at it (his father was never the type) but hey, it was inexpensive! And something Imran was convinced Viggo should at least learn how to do. Most of the time the two of them would come home empty-handed to a still very cheerful Nannette, congratulating her husband and her little man on their successful expedition.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Music…
has always been a large part of Viggo's life. With Nannette working nights, Viggo spent much of his childhood in and around clubs closer to the French Quarter. One of his mother's coworkers handed him a guitar too big for his body one night as a joke, expecting little more than a cute photograph…but he'd really introduced him to something!
Recognizing her son's fascination, Nannette was quick to give Viggo her own guitar with the excuse that she didn't use it anymore. That guitar remains Viggo's most treasured possession for decades and is the one we can still see him lugging around well into his vampirism.
It's cliché, but music really spoke to Viggo in a way that people couldn't. He could be certain of how things would end up if he kept working with it, following rhythm and structure… it quieted down his mind, which only seemed to roar louder with age. It was something to focus on (mentally and physically) and later became one of the only two direct ties he has to his own life, naming the guitar "Nan" after his Nannette.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Nannette…
Losing his mother at ten years old had really done a number on Viggo. The house dulled out immediately, with everything good being taken away with his mother's body…
Imran spiraled hard into drinking and despair at the loss of his light of a wife, descending rapidly into resentment and anger. Imran’s anger was wrongfully redirected towards Viggo who at some point almost lost the ability to recognize him. Viggo was strange and sensitive and much too similar to his mother in the face at the time (though to Viggo's disliking, he would grow more into his father's).
Some nights, he seemed to hate Viggo hated him for needing too much, hated seeing him cling to the guitar that had belonged to hands he could no longer hold. Most of all, over all of his misplaced hatred, Viggo believed his father hated being alive, and that he · · - Viggo - · · was the closest thing to take out the gut-wrenching feeling that comes with realizing you no longer care for your own life.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
After the loss of his mother…
it wasn't long before Viggo was enrolled into a public school. It was rough. None of the teachers seemed to know how to teach him or accommodate a child who'd been homeschooled his entire life. None of the kids knew what to do with him either. Viggo was fairly left alone during his short time and had only attended for a few months. No one seemed interested in bullying him to Viggo’s fortune, but no one sought him out as a friend either…
At home things only got worse. Accusations escalated between Imran and Viggo, and their altercations became more physical than emotional. Viggo became as guilty of hitting his father as his father was him. Their fights had become so frequent and their silences so long lasting that by the time attendance notices started arriving in the mail, neither Viggo nor Imran cared enough to answer them. Viggo had stopped attending school altogether, which was proof enough to Imran that his son had failed. He even went as far as to blame Nannette for "coddling" him.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Leaving home…
Was difficult, but looking back at it now, Viggo considers being homeless at eleven years old with little more than a guitar, a pair of earrings, and the clothes on his back to have been the easiest stage of his life. It was easier than living with his father, at least. He was still young and cute if not scrappy, very much still looked like someone's baby, strangers took pity on him. He was offered spare food, older 'gutter punks' shared their shelter locations and taught him what plants were edible, which dumpsters to search through and how to avoid police. For a small amount of time as silly as it sounds given his situation, he had felt free!
Free, but not all kindness came without a fee. Nannette had raised him heavily on the golden rules that if you put out kindness into the world it would come back to you, treat others how you would like to be treated. Be nice to others, and they'll be nice to you. That was true back in their smaller neighborhood community but Viggo started to realize that everywhere and everyone weren't a part of his community like that. Viggo wanted to and still wants to believe that most people are fundamentally good but sometimes it gets difficult to do so. Sometimes he'd get lucky… church ladies would slip him leftovers and elderly couples would let him shower and send him on his way, a mechanic once paid him honestly for helping him sweep up his floors! And he had met an older busking group who showed him a few new chords without asking anything of him.
Other times he wasn't so lucky… obligations for food, sketchy places to stay. All that trust he was willing to put out, though, finally ended when an adult attempted to steal his guitar. Afterward, Viggo stopped trusting communal shelter spaces and began sleeping alone whenever possible , with the case rarely leaving his hands.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
On the road…
Viggo had found that traveling was fine, only exhausting, and it was a good way to keep himself out of trouble. He walked during the days and slept during the nights ; the longest he'd stay in one spot was about a week if there was lots to see. He'd gotten this grand idea in his head that keeping himself moving didn't have to be so exhausting and scary. Viggo would visit every state in the country and collect proof of it through patches and stories! The only problem with that was money.
And although Viggo does occasionally make his own patches and decor, he really wanted different touring patches , and with no job, it didn't really matter how cheap they were. Up until the point of leaving Louisiana, Viggo had been fine digging for food with the occasional quarter pressed into his palm… but he didn't really know how to work.
He did know music, though. Busking became his solution, and oh did it work! Fortunately for Viggo, people were often willing to give money to a child with a guitar ; unfortunately for Viggo, local authorities were significantly less charmed.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Viggo gets arrested
Loitering! vagrancy! performing without a permit! something small, something meaningless, but it was enough to scare him off. This slowly became a recurring event throughout Viggo's adolescence. Not the arrest itself, but the sympathy and pity he had earned began to dry up. People stopped seeing Viggo as a "lost boy" and instead started seeing him as a problem. A negro with no address, no papers, no guardian, and no place to be other than sidewalks and corners. The prejudice he encountered as a teen became impossible to ignore. Store owners would watch him more closely (which only spiked his paranoia, starting a cycle of him seeming more ‘suspicious’ looping back in circles) strangers became a lot quicker to assume criminal or delinquent intent, and he got more threats than he did introductions, especially while making his way through certain parts of Texas where he learned he was no longer accepted come night. It had almost killed him, actually.
The hardest lesson Viggo had to learn on the road was that you couldn't tell everything about a place based on what you were told on the map. He'd come across a few towns with churches and diners and friendly shop owners who let him use the restroom without buying something first, where he could sit out on the sidewalk and eat while watching a few younger children playing in the streets. But he realized that the closer it got to sunset, the longer people would stare at him and question him and hassle him to get a move on. Sometimes people asked him where he was staying, or who he was with, and bugged him about how long he was staying, but he found it scarier when no one would say anything to him at all. Streets would quiet up when he'd walk down sidewalks, cars slowing at his side…
Viggo started leaving before anyone had to ask him, and in other towns he wasn't really given the option to leave. He was threatened and chased off ; occasionally, a few blows would be landed on him for hanging around the wrong places after dark. This is about the time when Viggo started picking up on faces and micro-expressions to figure out when he should leave to avoid issues (which did him no favors when it came to trying to make money). This is also about the time Viggo started sleeping during the day hidden away, and traveling closer to the evenings.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Come 1979
Viggo had found himself staying around the West Coast a lot longer than he'd originally planned. It was nicer in the way that there were public showers and wash stations thanks to the beaches, and lots of churches willing to offer him food and washing supplies.
It wasn't long before Viggo stumbled into Santa Carla. He had made the poor decision of choosing a particularly long route on a very hot day and was exhausted upon arrival. The direction that Viggo was coming in wasn't much of a view, but the boardwalk certainly caught his eye. Viggo had found that more touristy/fair spots were easier to occupy because there was too much going on for anyone to notice him taking a little nap on a bench. This is how he'd met Nichole!
Nichole had been watching her friends stand that night and called him over when she saw him staring in awe at a few corn dogs being handed over to a group of teens. She'd basically told him he looked like shit and then asked if he was hungry. He agreed to both of these things and she tossed over her brown food sack she'd had stuffed under the counter. Viggo thanked her but didn't engage in too much small talk. He was exhausted and left to go find himself a bench, only to get a flashlight in his face and shooed away.
Outside of sleeping on boardwalk benches, not many people were too concerned with his presence. The areas around the boardwalk were a bit worse off with alternatives & homeless out and about if you cared to look around so he wasn’t anything special to ogle at. Speaking of the boardwalk, the place was one giant tourist trap, so it provided easy and reliable crowds. He'd found shelter beneath a dock piling not far from it, closer to some workhouses, and began contemplating the possibility of staying a little longer than his usual week for the cash alone.
Unfortunately for Viggo, Santa Carla already had plans to keep him. And something had been watching him since he first crossed that large sign.
Viggo, despite loving the place and the funnel cake that came with it, started growing increasingly paranoid. He tried to brush it off. It wasn't uncommon for Viggo to feel like he was being watched, or to hear things (small clatters, his name being murmured in conversation, other things that just weren't there). But things only seemed to be getting worse. It almost felt like someone was playing with him in a way. Wind picking up like a passing body beside him near alleyways. Small whistling sounds matching his footsteps in an almost cartoonish manner. He swore he'd heard himself calling him from across the beach while pushing his guitar case up under the piling. He'd wake up to find footsteps circling his sleeping spot in several loops leading to nowhere.
One time, when he'd been passing under the pier, he'd heard voices above him…laughing and hooting like teens running around. But when he'd climbed up, it would be empty. And when he climbed back down, he heard a voice taunting him:
“Too slow, man.”
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
The Lost Boys
That feeling of being watched died down briefly after meeting a certain charming blonde one night. Viggo had treated himself to buying a pack of cigarettes with whatever money he'd earned, which was a rare purchase for him. The moment he was outside of the crappy store he'd bought it from, he was already pulling one out and pocketing the rest for worse days. The dock pilings were nice at night. He wasn't far from the beach and he could see the boardwalk lights from there. Santa Carla really had its charm if you kept to yourself. The locals were odd (they seemed to love their stories.) The murder capital of the world! vampire rumors — nothing he hadn't heard before growing up in Louisiana.
Viggo couldn't help notice the small shifting noises, and eventually a figure emerged between two buildings and into the streetlight. There was something… off about this guy. Slightly uncanny. Viggo had assumed it was a trick of his mind, but upon being approached, he found himself easily charmed despite not being able to place the small feeling of dread he'd felt when the blonde's face hit the streetlights. Viggo should've said no when he was asked if he was willing to let the guy bum a cigarette off of him. Or lied. Or walked away. But he's always been big on sharing despite not having much to share.
The guy - who would later be introduced as Marko Marino — asked him about his patches, complimenting him. Viggo mistook it for flirting and was taken aback. Not that he was against the idea of a California blondie chatting him up, but he hadn't found himself the target of flattery in a long time. They conversed for a little while before Viggo decided to ask for the blonde's name, but before he could answer, the other boy had been called off by a group.
It was around this time when Nichole offered Viggo a job at her record store, claiming she wanted someone who she knew knew their way around music, and Viggo obviously seemed like the type. Viggo had never taken on an official job before this point, but he liked the idea of working around music! So he agreed. And why not have some form of income for himself? He was nineteen now and finally wising up.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Viggo’s first job!
Nichole, on top of offering Viggo a job, had seemed to develop a large interest in him. Her offering him a job wasn't out of the blue. They had become pretty good friends. She often stayed out the hours Viggo would emerge and start his busking, occasionally dropping cash and coins into his case. They talked about a lot of things. Nichole was quite a few years older than Viggo — roughly in her late thirties to early forties — but she shared a similar clothing fashion to him and knew a lot about his interests. He'd grown attached to her in a way and looked forward to seeing her on the boardwalk. She'd pointed out a few tapes he may or may not have stared at for a little too long while browsing, and eventually even gifted him one. It was nice. She was a safe space.
The job itself wasn't difficult. Stocking shelves and organizing records alongside helping customers find things… he really loved it! It was very repetitive interaction-wise, which Viggo appreciated because it took less stress off his brain, and it was something he had to consistently attend to. Nichole eventually invited him over under the excuse of helping him get cleaned up before one of his shifts. Which wasn't unreasonable. Viggo had access to public showers, sure, but it was nothing like the real thing.
For the first time in forever, Viggo felt completely clean. He'd even brushed his teeth in front of a real sink and mirror, which was extremely disorienting. He had stared at himself for a long time and found himself looking significantly more exhausted and ill than he had imagined. He got weirdly emotional (embarrassingly emotional) but he was so very thankful.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
When Viggo wasn’t working…
He still spent most of his free time busking….less busking, more simply playing outside with his guitar case conveniently propped open. Same thing. Marko would show up on and off depending on the night, before disappearing into god knows where. Viggo always assumed Marko was in a similar situation to himself, but he figured it was probably best not to say anything about it.
Additionally, Viggo really ended up liking the carousel. Later in the night, when it'd finally turn off and the crowds of people would disperse, you could find Viggo sitting near it for warmth as the night air grew colder with the nearing of winter. The horses would glint under the neon lights of other rides and lamps, but far off. And one night, while Viggo was starting to doze, it seemed to start up on its own. Before Viggo could stand, it had stopped again.
Viggo confided in Nichole about it, and she tried to reassure him that it was probably one of the workers trying to spook him off. She admitted that she worried about him sometimes. As bad as it was starting to sound from all he was telling Nichole, whatever game Santa Carla was playing with Viggo wasn't all that bad. Sometimes he'd find little offerings where he slept: sand dollars, bits of coral, an earring. Nothing valuable, but they were clean like they'd been washed and arranged just for him! Once, he woke to a seagull skull with a cigarette butt tucked into its beak. When he'd get more concerning gifts, he started chucking them away, only to wake to them the next evening laid neatly at his side again.
Some days were worse than others, like they always were. He'd sit alone near his dock piling to take care of Nan, sitting so close to the water it worried him about dry rot. He'd heard some steps behind him, and when he looked up, Viggo was greeted with something — or someone — crouched at the very end of the pier, barely visible against the sky. It was gone after a double glance, and Viggo convinced himself it was a hallucination. But it still bothered him.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Marko Marino…
Weird guy. If Viggo were being honest, he still wasn't entirely convinced Marko was real for the first few weeks. The blonde had a habit of appearing where regular people wouldn't. Sometimes Viggo would look up from restringing Nan only to find Marko sitting on a railing several feet above him. Other times he'd hear somebody whistling nearby and turn around expecting to find an empty alley, only for Marko to approach and greet him looking far too pleased with himself. It was weird, and probably should've made Viggo more nervous than it already did. Maybe it would have, if Marko wasn't so consistent with it.
They'd started having brief conversations. Marko seemed to get a real kick out of him, which Viggo wasn't entirely sure how to feel about. The feeling he was being watched around Santa Carla never disappeared, but Viggo became less intimidated by it the longer it went on without repercussion.
Every so often Viggo would find one of his belongings moved a few feet from where he'd left it, or a shell on top of his guitar case. He'd noticed these were more frequent on the nights when Marko didn't pop up and was certain the blonde was responsible for it. The longer Viggo stayed in Santa Carla (which had only been two weeks by now), the more Marko seemed willing to hang around him. Sometimes he'd sit nearby while Viggo busked, loudly criticizing song choices he clearly liked, or disappearing for twenty or so minutes and coming back with food offerings. Occasionally he'd lie upside down somewhere, listening to Viggo talk and asking about certain lingo in different regions. Marko quickly became the closest thing Viggo had to a friend, and for someone who'd spent most of his life leaving places before he became attached to people, it really caught him off guard.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Paul Necalli…
was the first of Marko's companions that Viggo met face to face, and arguably the easiest to get along with. At first, the entire thing seemed like a joke. Marko had dragged Paul over to Viggo one evening with the intention of testing Viggo (though as to why, Viggo's still unsure).
His first conversation with Paul consisted of Paul rattling off band names, songs, and musicians. Viggo felt slightly interrogated, but when he answered "correctly," Paul seemed to get louder and a bit more passionate. When he corrected Paul on something, this only doubled. What started out as interrogation quickly became bonding, and the two spent most of the night sitting on the beach trading mixtapes and arguing over songs neither of them had listened to in god knows how long. Paul seemed to be seeking him out. He'd often pull around the corner and begin pestering Viggo with stupid dares and challenges and even stupider jokes….
Eventually, against Viggo's better judgment, he'd started to participate. Thennnnn… he'd dabble in being the one to pester Paul, who was delighted by this discovery. Around Paul, Viggo started to feel a bit younger, not younger age-wise, but more his age. More teenish and boyish. Less fearful and concerned about what he was going to eat that week. For a few hours at a time, he got to be nineteen instead of homeless. That's an odd way to put it, but it really mattered to Vig. Much like Marko, Paul developed a habit of leaving things behind. This came more in the form of crude drawings in the sand. But as childish as it was, there was something strangely sweet about knowing somebody had thought about him after they left.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
At the record store…
Marko and Paul both started showing up. It really hadn't taken them that long to figure out where Viggo spent his time when he wasn't in his usual spots or with the two of them, and suddenly neither of them seemed capable of staying away. The first few visits weren't that bad. Marko would show up with Paul following close behind him, announcing very loudly that he wasn't going to be buying anything before touching basically everything in sight. It was a bit of a disturbance, but Viggo didn't care and it was harmless. Eventually, despite Viggo's appreciation for the two of them, they very obviously lacked personal space and public manners among other things… Paul especially — he would lean halfway across the counter while Viggo was trying to help customers. Marko would come and perch up on displays he definitely wasn't supposed to sit on, and the two of them combined would continuously distract Viggo until he lost track of what he was doing; the fact that neither of them seemed to have jobs only made it worse.
One evening they showed up together, and then with two more people: David and Dwayne. Viggo will admit he'd been pretty nervous. He was especially intimidated by David, (who didn't do much to earn that) but the way he seemed to be sizing Viggo up curiously sparked up some of his preexisting anxieties. Dwayne seemed to have more interest in what Paul had to say than in what Viggo had to say, but Viggo quickly realized that was probably because he kept catching Viggo staring at him. Viggo caught Dwayne looking at him on occasion, very similar to how he imagines he probably looks when observing others. With now four punks loitering inside of the record store, Nichole advised Viggo to just take the night off and get everyone out of there. She'd obviously been getting irritated anytime she came out to check on Viggo, so it was only a matter of time. When Viggo finally emerged from the back room after being lectured, Paul simply spread his arms, saying, "You're off now!"
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Looking back…
Viggo probably should've known something was off with these guys. Normal people didn't spend their evenings the way they did, but hey, Viggo didn't know normal people.
They climbed things constantly: railings, roofs, fire escapes. At one point they ended up halfway up the back side of Main Street, climbing rusted fire escapes with mystery spray paint cans tucked into jackets and back pockets. Paul and Dwayne were somewhere below Viggo, banging on rails, while David was practically out of view up ahead. Viggo and Marko were somewhere in the middle when he almost slipped. Viggo's stomach dropped to his ass, very suddenly realizing he was several stories above pavement.
David warned them that "if he falls, he falls," but before Viggo could panic, a hand grabbed the back of his vest and hauled him back upright like it was nothing. Marko had definitely saved Viggo's life, but warned him he wouldn't grab him a second time. Viggo laughed it off, but tread more carefully after that.
Somehow the lot of them ended up back on the beach, surrounding a bin fire where they'd take turns tossing in spray paint cans and watching them burst. At some point, a shower of sparks erupted towards him, with only an arm between him and a good burning. Still, he was told to relax. When the boys left to return to wherever they retreated during the day, so did Viggo. He noticed at some point that he'd started having dreams where he'd be looking down at himself, watching himself curl back toward the water in the sand, pushing the guitar case up to the base of the wood planks. If he leaned in close enough, he could hear his own heartbeat, but he'd usually wake up to a head bonk and an echo of nonexistent laughter in his ear.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
The end of November…
brought colder wind over the water. Viggo had started to feel a little sick. It wasn't often that he would fall ill, and he wasn't too concerned about it. That was obvious, because when Dwayne invited him out to the beach for a night with the boys, he'd accepted.
They had apparently brought drinks. David was the only one not drinking, for whatever reason. Viggo had never really drunk before this point and ended the night getting super emotional, confessing to Paul and David how much he appreciated them spending time with him for however long, while watching Dwayne chuck Marko into the ocean repeatedly. Dwayne had been the only one willing to escort him "home," leaving him back under his dock piling.
Viggo only got sicker after this point. Usually his solution to sickness when he want sure where it stemmed from (which in this case was sleeping too close to the sea under damp boards, straight up inhaling damp air) to drink some water and sleep it off. But he started getting scared when he couldn't finish a song due to the inability to breathe. Viggo had to give up after bending over with a torturous cough, struggling to breathe while tourists walked around him as if he were another obstacle in the way.
Marko had found him sometime that same night under his dock piling. He'd sat down in the sand by one of the supports and tried to have a small conversation with him, tease him a bit, but started to get annoyed at Viggo's constant coughing and insistence that Marko should just leave him the fuck alone. Viggo had convinced himself he was dying and would rather hide somewhere to rot away like a dying cat, where no one would find him until the stench got too bad, than figure out other solutions. Nichole was kind enough to let him take a while off work, even offering to help him to the doctors, but he declined.
One night, Viggo woke up shaking so hard he thought he was about to have another seizure. His head, lungs, and just about every bone in his body were in excruciating pain. He really thought he was going to die there, only to fall back asleep shortly after. Marko wasn't consistent with his check-ins by any means, but he'd pop in and out to an unresponsive Viggo every once in a while. Viggo had lost almost two weeks sleeping and sweating it out, hallucinating out of his mind when he would resurface. His fever had reached devastating levels, but the boys would come and go. Sometimes he'd wake up and find Paul sitting there playing with a few rubber bands. Sometimes he'd wake up alone next to a bag of half-eaten chips, a jacket, and a bottle of water.
Eventually, though, the fever broke, and the first night he crawled back onto the boardwalk, he looked like death itself. He'd asked the boys if they had really been around him or left him food when he was out, but everything was denied, mainly by David, whose opinion on Viggo had shifted in ways unobvious to Viggo.
When Viggo started working again, Nichole and he would have long talks where she'd insist he was too good to be sleeping outside. She invited him back over to her place.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Nichole…
gave Viggo clean clothes and some good food. She let him know he could stay longer if he'd wanted, but he didn't want to be too intrusive. Nichole started getting more interested in his past, asking questions about life on the road and New Orleans, finding out it wasn't particularly difficult to get Viggo talking once you got on a topic he actually cared about. Most people liked the idea of Viggo's life more than the reality of it. People really liked hearing stories about hitchhiking, sleeping under stars, and traveling from state to state collecting patches. The romantic version of drifting. Eventually, they'd realize there were long stretches of hunger and loneliness attached to all that freedom, and lose interest. But Nichole didn't lose interest.
One evening she'd invited him over under the excuse of helping mend a tear in one of his jackets. Another time it was because she'd made too much food. Then it was because she had a record she thought he'd enjoy listening to. The reasons kept changing, but the result stayed the same (which was Viggo ending up at her apartment). This he didn't think too much of. Truthfully, he was lonely enough that he probably wouldn't have questioned it if he had. The only people he spent consistent time around were Nichole and the boys, and unlike the boys, Nichole existed during daylight hours. She was predictable, reliable, and easier to find.
The boys were another story entirely, only hanging out with Viggo on their terms and their time. Marko reacted strangely to Viggo mentioning his time with Nichole, seeming suddenly less interested in whatever conversation they were having and eventually leaving or changing the subject. Occasionally he would make a smartass remark. One time, while Viggo was closing up the record store, Marko appeared beside the counter complaining about how much time Viggo spent at the store. When Viggo explained he worked here so he'd obviously be here a lot, he'd only rolled his eyes and clarified he was talking about Nichole's personal situation.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Boyish disadventure
That's… probably what they'd call it. The boys continued dragging Viggo into increasingly questionable activities, apparently seeming to spend their free time trying to die. They were hopping rooftops one night and lying near train tracks with cars blowing inches from their faces another. There were several occasions where Viggo found himself standing somewhere high enough to kill him if he slipped, and every time Viggo could only seem to focus on the expectant and challenging look on David's face as he waited to see if he would. Against all logic and years of experience and his initial suspicions of the entire group, Viggo trusted them, so much that he'd forget to be afraid of some of the things they had him doing.
Nichole's views on them only seemed to worsen. What started out as her calling them troublemakers or rolling her eyes when they'd stroll through eventually became her feeding into Viggo, warning him that they were bad news and he'd be better off spending his time with people who actually cared about him. This probably should've set something off in his brain towards one party or the other, but if anything, she had sounded genuinely concerned, so he brushed it off.
With winter officially beginning, it had become obvious that he was socially a part of their group. I'll be honest when I say, for the most part — I know it sounds bad — Viggo had been treated more like a stray dog the group had fed and let follow them around. He was the guy they grabbed when they were doing stupid shit, but they wouldn't let him into their lives the way they had pushed themselves into his.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Surf Nazis…
These guys didn't come out of nowhere, but Viggo tried not to pay them any attention. Anyone who willingly referred to themself as a surf "Nazi" was probably not somebody worth arguing with. But they still made him nervous since he'd first got to Santa Carla. At first it was smaller things. He spotted them standing around the boardwalk watching people pass by and caught one of them staring for a little too long at him before looking away. Other times he'd notice them laughing amongst themselves while looking right at him. He convinced himself he was paranoid. He'd spent most of his life being stared at by strangers, if he stopped every time someone looked at him, he never would've gotten anywhere. Eventually, these little things became harder to ignore.
Viggo had dealt with people like this his entire life, so he tried to go into it with an "avoid them and they'll get bored" mindset, but they only seemed to want to escalate things further. One of his more notable experiences had been when he was walking alone near the beach and someone had whistled his way. This wasn't entirely unusual, Viggo's hair was long and only getting longer, and his clothes weren't masculine even by late seventies standards, so from a distance behind, people sometimes mistook him for a woman. Then a few more whistles came out along with some more discomforting catcalls. He knew where this was going and turned around just long enough for whoever it was to realise their mistake. But it was apparently the wrong move, because everything flipped like a switch. Suddenly he wasn't a pretty girl anymore, but every slur under the sun that these guys could think of. The whole interaction somehow became his fault, and he'd scurried off before things could get any worse.
Things got worse anyway. The longer Viggo stayed around, the more he seemed to run into these guys: near the beach, on the boardwalk, outside convenience stores, across the street from the record shop, just absolutely everywhere. Sometimes they wouldn't say anything to or about him, only familiar stares that bothered Viggo more than any words that could've been thrown his way. Additionally, it worsened the more he hung out with The Lost Boys. At first the Surf Nazis only seemed vaguely aware that Viggo occasionally talked with Marko and Paul, then they started seeing him with them more often, then Dwayne… and David… and then all four of them together. And whatever annoyance they'd had with Viggo suddenly gained a reason. Because now he wasn't just some weird drifter sleeping under the pier, he was hanging around with people they already had beef with.
Come mid to late winter, Viggo's entire Santa Carla experience revolved around these guys. He was changing his routes and watching over his shoulder, listening for footsteps while he lay down to sleep. He confided in Nichole like he did in most things. He started lingering after work instead of wandering or heading back to the pier. Sometimes he'd sit inside the record store until it was closed up, and then a little longer after. He'd walk Nichole home just to have someone to be with and something to do, and when she'd invite him inside, he wouldn't say no. The first time he fell asleep on her couch, he woke up panicked and disoriented. He was indoors and safe. His guitar was still at his side, and no one was there to chase him off. He kind of got emotional about it, but he did his best to hold it in.
(He couldn’t).
When Nichole noticed this and told him that if he wanted to, he didn't have to keep sleeping under the docks, he had only told her he'd been considering moving on from Santa Carla altogether. When he'd told the boys the same thing with a bit less context, they'd reacted strangely and deeply unhelpfully.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Stay in Santa Carla…
That's what Nichole had managed to convince him. He was unknowingly giving her what she wanted over doing what he wanted. Her couch became a spare room where Viggo stayed, then her real spare room started being where he'd end up crashing. The boundaries between them started to blur under Viggo's nose. He didn't take much notice of it, considering he hadn't had stable housing for forever. He was comparing her behavior to sleeping beneath a damp dock…of course everything she offered seemed wonderful!
When things between the two of them finally escalated, it was because Nichole was someone that Viggo felt he trusted and had a deep connection with, which is why, when his anxiety began to spike mid-kiss and he felt that familiar gut drop of being watched, he excused himself to the restroom to collect himself. When he came back, Nichole was gone, leaving him in an empty house with moved furniture, broken glass, and the horrific realization that the one place in Santa Carla he'd considered safe wasn't anymore.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Death…
That's always been an enemy of Viggo's, hasn't it? Marko gave Viggo an interesting reaction when he told him about it. He'd been too scared to report anything yet…a homeless drifter moves into some lady's house and she goes missing within the same week? He didn't know what to do. But Marko had been irritated about Nichole, and now he accepted her "death" (his words, not Viggo’s) and didn't mention it again nor give Viggo advice. This sent Viggo into a spiral.
It was official. He needed to get the fuck out of Santa Carla. He was such an idiot for trying to make it work here. Viggo had most of his belongings aside from an emergency bag he'd left in his spot. One way or another, it was only going to be a matter of time until he realized he couldn't be cooped up in that house of hers. Maybe a part of him knew that. That was usually how bad things started for him. He'd stayed somewhere longer than intended, become attached to people he shouldn't have, and began imagining a future in a place that was never meant to keep him.
Santa Carla had gotten under his skin in a way no town ever had… He really liked the boardwalk and the music. He liked the boys. He liked having somewhere to consistently be. It should've been enough to make him happy, but instead it left him feeling trapped. Nichole's disappearance sat heavy in his chest, and every strange thing he'd brushed aside over the last several months suddenly felt impossible to ignore.
Viggo would skip town like every other and leave the murder capital of the world behind like everywhere else, but the beach was quieter that night. It was nearing morning, and there weren't many people out and about. It was a parting gift. Viggo had spent the last several weeks feeling watched from every direction, and now it felt like there was no one watching him at all.
The first voice called out to him, and he immediately knew he shouldn't respond. The second told him to stop walking, but the third made him run. Despite what David liked to call him, and would call him once more in the future for pulling the same shit, Viggo wasn't stupid. His fear had kept him alive for years.
He bolted from the beach and away from the boardwalk, through the woods and more, for a little while he genuinely thought he might get away! He'd spent most of his life on foot and was quick when he wanted to be. Viggo knew how to move over uneven ground better than most people. But said uneven ground narrowed into darker stretches of shoreline and eventually toward the cliffs. The boardwalk lights became smaller behind him while the shouting grew louder. At some point, some lucky bastard caught up to him, and after this point Viggo canonically had a hard time remembering anything in order.
Viggo fought back, because of course he did. He was never particularly strong, but surviving alone for nearly a decade had to at least teach him something. Biting and clawing and kicking at his attackers. Some people would hurt you no matter how polite you were, and sometimes all you could do was make it difficult for them to do so. Unfortunately for Vig, There were more of them than there were of him. Despite his better food intake and sleep schedule he was still very skinny and underfed, the only muscle on him had been from carrying his guitar and walking miles wich in the grand scheme of things ended up being useless. Pain took over, and at some point he found he could barely move, let alone try to get up.
The strange thing was that he wasn't really thinking about the people hurting him anymore. He thought more about home; the fishing trips with his father before everything had gone to shit, about pretending to be asleep in restaurant booths and sitting on the floor while his mother hummed to herself in the kitchen. About all the little things he'd spent years terrified of forgetting.
For most of his life, Viggo had been remarkably good with faces. Not so much with names or voices, but always faces. After his transition, that would change, and his memories would become harder to hold onto. The worst face he struggled with now was his mother's. But there once was a time when her face was what kept him pushing through bad episodes and nights alone. Through the long stretches of road and the nights that bled into each other, through the way people looked at him, hands that shoved him and harsh words paired with suggestions that he'd better leave or…
He’d held onto her. Even at the end, he could still see her. Through the haze of heavy blows to his face and bone-shattering kicks to his ribs, he could see her face slowly taking over the faces leering overhead. He thought of her smile, of her mischievous spirit not many around them would recognize she'd ever had. Her encouragement and reassurance that he was loved, with a quiet hum she used to carry under her breath, a song of her own he hadn't thought about in years until it came back all at once, threading through the noise overtaking the spat hate like it had never left. Viggo wasn't completely certain there would be an afterlife, or a heaven above waiting to greet him with open arms and the sounds of trumpets behind a blinding light, and he still didn’t by the time of his death. Religion always seemed like something meant for others, but just conveniently out of reach for him to get a grasp on. But for the first time in a long time, he truly hoped there was. He hoped there might've been something out there for him some place where his mother was waiting to reunite with him…
As he neared the end of his human life, her face settled in, so clear and perfect. She looked just like she did when she was still around. It filled his vision so completely that he couldn't see anything else. He didn't see the final blow to his face take place. He didn't even know there was a boot coming down.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Vampirism.
Viggo's body had been left, robbed of what little it was worth, fading in and out of consciousness on the cliffside when he was found. It was reaching sunrise by now, and familiar gloved hands patted at his face before he'd faded out.
Everything past this point for the next two years would be a blur, stumbling around Santa Carla as if his body hadn't been broken in every way no less than an hour or two before, the screams of his assailants as he'd dragged them to pieces, and his own screams before he'd found shelter from the burning light overhead beneath his dock piling. He didn't remember being found frothing at the mouth the following night and being dragged to a hole in the ground. He did remember the feeling of the sun being trapped beneath his skin, opening his eyes to hazy figures and odd voices. Sometimes it was Paul, mostly it was Marko, and occasionally Dwayne. Sometimes David would stand a bit further off from him, looking either concerned or annoyed. Then he'd lose time again. Days to weeks would be gone.
A deep gnawing starvation clawed at his stomach, yet when the boys would drag home their kill and attempt to feed him, the whole ordeal would become a miserable fight. Half the time he wasn't conscious enough to understand what was happening. The other half, he was convinced they were trying to poison him. It often took multiple people to get blood into him. Marko would hold his shoulders and Dwayne would hold his head as Paul attempted to pry Viggo's mouth open. Viggo thrashed and shook and fought them, with a surprising new strength for someone who looked like he did. Within an hour of getting it down, the boys would often hear coughing and retching from deeper in the cave, choking into a deathly silence.
The seizures started shortly after. They happened every few days, then every day, and then several times a day. It really affected his memory and just fucked him up overall. He'd wake to hear arguments between the boys, mostly David and Marko. Then more months passed. The cave stopped interacting with him unless trying to feed him, thanks to Marko's declarations, but it was clear everyone's patience was wearing thin. Viggo consumed ridiculous amounts of blood compared to the others and somehow still worked worse every time.
David considered mercy-killing Viggo. Dwayne and Marko had both had pretty rough transitions, but he'd never seen anything like this before. Eventually he'd done something he absolutely hated doing, which was asking Max for help. When Max finally made his way down to the cave, he arrived at disaster. Marko was half feral, and the boys had Viggo shoved near the back of the cave, closer to the leftovers of the hotel, in the pitch darkness, wrapped in blankets and jackets, sweating through everything. The boys had to move him there whenever his condition became too difficult to try to manage. Light changes seemed to trigger his seizures, even just candlelight. Sudden noises sometimes did too. Most nights Viggo wasn't conscious enough to know where he was being moved. He'd wake burning alive with fever in a pile of blankets, only to lose several more days shortly afterward.
Dwayne had felt particularly guilty about the arrangement. Nobody said it outright, but everyone knew why Viggo had been moved further into the tunnels. Because it was easier for them to sleep. A hell of a lot easier to listen to him cough from a distance without having to watch him suffer through a transition that should've killed him months ago.
On the occasion that Viggo would resurface from the haze of seizures and fever, he was rarely coherent enough to tolerate company for very long. He panicked in his confusion, forgetting where he was, and spent hours trying to leave before collapsing again. The room was a place where the boys could check on him without needing to hover over him. It was a compromise. A sad one, but… a compromise. Every few minutes his body would twitch violently or he'd let out a wet sneeze-like sound.
After the best possible diagnosis Max could provide (which wasn't all that great) it was decided they would wait Viggo out longer.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Feral
By the end of the year, things had gotten… better. Viggo stopped dying every week, which was considered progress amongst everyone. The fever had finally broken, but whatever emerged from it wasn't entirely there yet. Viggo was incoherent, wandering around, biting, tearing up leather, growling and hissing over a pile of belongings that he'd collected into what was now his "room."
Whenever Viggo became particularly difficult, David occasionally resorted to kicking him back up the tunnel he'd crawled out of until he calmed down, which was not a popular decision. This created a kind of divide in the group, where David maintained that he was being practical and thinking of Viggo's safety, while everyone except Dwayne (depending on the day) claimed that David was just being an asshole.
Viggo's corner eventually became a hoarding area where he collected absolutely anything. Bottle caps, necklaces, pocket watches, harmonicas, a tambourine, records, a mirror, cigarette butts from around the cave mouth (you name it) with absolutely no organization. The others found it funny until they found out he could tell if they'd taken something back from his piles, and if something was missing from Viggo's piles, he'd fly into a panic.
This hoarding mindset slowly faded as his mind recovered, but his possessiveness over these items lingered for a bit longer, only to disappear much later. David started feeling a bit more pity for Viggo around this time, apparently. Viggo seemed terrified constantly, suspicious and flighty. Sometimes he'd vanish into the cave system for hours, only to return covered in cobwebs and dirt, but he usually came back with something none of them realized they'd lost however many years ago.
Conversation with Viggo was still impossible for a long while. Most attempts to communicate with him resulted in him staring at whoever had been talking to him for an uncomfortable amount of time before slinking away or fixating on a singular word. Paul often attempted to trigger specific words by making them seem more interesting to get a kick out of it, but he'd end up getting scolded for this. One of the first actual conversations Viggo had had with any of the boys post-vampirism had been with David and had lasted less than two minutes. He'd asked if he'd killed anybody, and David lied to him as reassurance. Viggo would later find out the truth, but at the time he'd seemed to sleep easier.
Viggo's recovery progressed once he'd started to become more conscious. Paul had caught Viggo trying and failing to tune his guitar, on the verge of tears, and exhausted, had listened for about a minute or two before walking over and snatching it from his hands. Viggo had nearly swung at him before realizing Paul was tuning it for him and handing it back.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Improvement!
He'd started to improve enough that the boys started bringing him along for proper hunts. Viggo still struggled with feeding more than the others ever had. Sometimes he'd make it through an entire hunt without issue, and other nights his body would suddenly lock up halfway through a meal. The seizures were less severe than they'd been during his transition, but they still happened often enough to be a problem, which was why Dwayne usually stayed close.
One particular hunt the following year had gone pretty shitty. A couple had been driving the coast roads late at night when they crossed paths with the boys. Afterward, David, Marko, and Paul were doing what they usually did when they did car kills, which was looting. They stole cigarettes and jackets and started searching the glove compartments, arguing over who got what. Meanwhile, Viggo had barely gotten two feet away before his legs gave out. The seizure wasn't especially violent by Viggo's standards he'd hit the ground and trembled but didn't lose consciousness (terrifying). Then Dwayne was kneeling beside him, hoisting him upright.
He'd been halfway through trying to brush Dwayne off and defend himself when Paul called out from the passenger seat of the vehicle. He had found a handful of small plastic toys: action figures and crayons and whatnot. Dwayne had dragged Viggo over to start quietly arguing with David before the argument got much louder. Viggo had seen Dwayne frustrated and annoyed, hostile even, especially towards Marko over the last year, but he'd never had to hear the full force of Dwayne's anger before that moment. He was fuming, and eventually David rounded the car to start grabbing at papers.
Once David got what he needed, everyone loaded back onto their bikes. By the time they reached the house, Viggo was still failing to recover. His bones hurt and his vision kept swimming further away from him, but he wasn't about to bitch about it with so much going on. They'd gotten into the house through one of the windows and left Viggo closer to the entrance while they poked around. Paul and Marko had split off onto one side of the house, sharing wide-eyed and knowing looks, while David and Dwayne chose the other direction. It was quiet for a while again before Dwayne started chewing David out again. Viggo couldn't make out the conversation, but whatever it was about was definitely older and personal.
Curiosity eventually got the better of him, and Viggo made the mistake of trying to pull himself forward. He hit the carpet beside the couch, groaned, and decided to stay on the ground until the gang regrouped. That was when he noticed a certain someone watching him from a small camping tent set up in the corner of the living room. The kid couldn't have been older than eight. Neither of them spoke, and the kid looked petrified! Viggo didn't look much better…but.
When the boys came back, they found Viggo and the kid lying on the floor together, apparently discussing dinosaurs, though Viggo looked barely conscious.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Laddie…
The boys wound up taking Laddie in until they could figure out what to do with him. The boys weren't exactly prepared for a child, nor equipped to take care of one, but what else were they going to do? David and Dwayne were the only two with any actual experience taking care of one, and David spent the first several weeks wrestling with his inner demons. By the time he'd come to terms with the fact that Laddie wasn't going anywhere, the kid had already settled himself in.
Dwayne did his best to teach Laddie things, being the only one of the boys with any proper schooling, while Paul and Marko taught him terrible things. David pretended to be uninterested in teaching Laddie anything, but would often be caught correcting him and redirecting him. But for whatever reason, Laddie would gravitate towards Viggo. At first, it was because despite how cool Laddie thought the boys were, there was still something very human about Viggo. Even after recovering, there was something perpetually sickly about him at this time, and Laddie liked to sit near him while he rested and listen to him talk about the places he'd been before Santa Carla and what he knew about the places he'd wanted to go.
Laddie's favorite thing to do was point out patches and listen to Viggo tell him everything he remembered about the people and the music and the food and the weather. Viggo played a big part in unintentionally teaching him geography! Viggo didn't realize it till towards the end of the year, but he'd grown extremely attached to Laddie and often enjoyed playing boardwalk games to win him prizes… One time, however, he and Marko stole a large plushie and made a run for it with Ed chasing after them.
He specifically bonded with Laddie over his creativity. Laddie was a very artistic little boy, and fortunately enough for him, he'd ended up being raised by musicians, artists, and dancers among various other weirdos. Viggo had helped Laddie deal with the trickier part of stringing beads and starfish together and tied knots when asked. Laddie had made a lot of the hanging decor in the cave!
And then… Laddie had gotten his hands on the blood bottle. Nobody knew what to do. The panic settled down eventually, but everyone was severely uncertain. They hadn't watched him properly, leaving him a half-vampire. None of the boys knew what to do, but after Laddie had drunk the blood, they couldn't drop him at a station or any other alternative options that they were totally still thinking of…
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
STARR/BIKE
The years following Viggo's transition, things were really looking up for him. He'd stopped having constant seizures and leaned more towards night terrors. He still had seizures on occasion, but they were a lot less frequent and more like how they were in his human life.
Thanks to Viggo feeling a bit better, Dwayne had really started advocating for Viggo to get his own bike, especially since now they had Laddie with them. It’d be good to have another pair of wheels and less people piling onto one. Unlike with everything else, the boys seemed determined to pay their local mechanics whenever they visited (in their human lives they had all been lower working class and they hadn't lost their respect for engineering work). Unfortunately, any money he'd had in the past had been blown, and looting victims' pockets never got them much of anything.
David assured Dwayne they would figure something out and joked about sending Viggo back out to busking. Viggo, at the thought, lit up and went back to his old work. Unfortunately for Viggo, playing after vampirism proved to be a challenge. He'd lost his flow and found himself sitting out there, more focused on his guitar than anything else, growing increasingly frustrated. The first night, he got so upset he gave up and went home and spent the rest of the night relatively isolated, trying to play one of his easiest songs. The boys would come around and encourage him that he sounded great and should play for them more often, but this only seemed to upset him more. He'd lost a very special part of him due to vampirism, but did his best to learn to mimic it. Once getting the hang of mimicking his own playing style, Marko would assure him he couldn't tell the difference, but Viggo could.
He'd gone back to playing for some spare cash. It was Starr who noticed Viggo first. What drew her over to him originally, Viggo couldn't tell you, but once she'd caught his eye, he'd tried his best to turn on his human charm, changing up the rhythm to something a little lower and pulling her in. She seemed to be having fun, dancing nearby and snickering when his chords tumbled, slipping a few dollars and coins into his open case. She had good energy, and Viggo was thrilled to find himself leaning towards it because that meant she was perfect!
She'd played him like a fiddle. She kept coming back night after night, drifting towards the sound of his playing, either sitting nearby or joining in; dancing, humming, or clapping along. It really helped in drawing in a crowd, so it wasn't long before Viggo introduced her to the boys. She was like them, in more ways than Viggo or the boys would realize at the time. They liked her vibe, she was easy to laugh and held her own in their shitshow.
Starr wasn't stupid by any means. She knew what they were (that's why she was here) but she liked what she had with them and started growing close with Viggo. Out of everyone, she was one of the few who shared his kind of creativity. She wasn't creative as in Marko's carefully planned jacket, or Dwayne's graffiti art, but they could make jewelry together! The two stayed up late designing clothes that jingled when they moved, and Starr would help Viggo busk. If they kept the spotlight on her, cash seemed to come easier.
Viggo deeply admired Starr. In her faux confidence, she was a bit awkward naturally, but he didn't mind either way. When David started pressing her about her first kill, Viggo made sure she never felt too cornered. Of course, like the others, he would've loved to keep her around forever, but she'd already willingly drunk blood to become what he'd thought she was. He didn't want her to get thrown into it as quickly as he did. This earned him her respect, and eventually she started taking up her own role in helping lure victims their way.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
1987
Viggo had felt bad for Starr, honestly. Some kid starts following her around like a lost puppy, and after being instructed to lead him off and make him her first kill, David intervenes with his own interest? The race had been entertaining enough, Viggo was never one to complain about watching David get punched in the face. Still, when they dragged Michael for wine and proper introductions, he couldn't help but notice something. It caught Viggo off guard more than he wanted to admit…how comfortable everyone seemed, with the exception of Starr, who was allowed to linger. No one had snapped at either Starr or Michael for hanging around or seemed concerned by their presence, while Viggo remembered being dragged into the cave half-dead and foaming at the mouth. This comparison was obviously unfair and he knew that. Still, it wounded him.
Michael wasn't the problem. Viggo actually liked him at first, he was kind of awkward and cocky, but he was kind and reminded Viggo a lot of another person he'd met on the road a while back. But watching David actually pick him kept rubbing Viggo the wrong way.
When Marko dragged Viggo home all those years ago, it had nearly split the colony in half. David and Dwayne had been furious. Not because either of them hated Viggo…David was upset because he hadn't wanted another person trapped in their situation, and saw Marko being the one to turn Viggo on a whim as a mass betrayal, while Dwayne formed a resentment due to being unable to do something similar in the past. Two vampires down was already too many, then Viggo's transition went the way it did and only made things worse. Viggo had heard them argue through his fever dreams. He'd hear about himself when the others thought he couldn't…how he was being discussed like some kind of wounded animal that wound up on their doorstep rather than a person.
Viggo never learned the full context of how exhausted everyone had been of how easily watching someone suffer for months could wear one down but he did remember David discussing alternative options and Marko blowing up in his face. It had been long enough now for everyone to have accepted the cards they were dealt, except for Viggo. So when David willingly offered the bottle, seeming excited and teasing, even, Viggo couldn't help but wonder what exactly had been wrong with him, why he'd been so unwanted at that time. Things had changed between him and David, so he didn't bother asking. But Starr started spending more time with Michael, and as wrong as it was to think that way, it only made matters worse. He hated how childish it was, but anytime he saw someone drift toward Mike, it felt like being eleven again and watching space get made in people's hearts for everyone except him.
His night terrors worsened, and the cave had not opened like a mouth so much as it forgot to shut. Words lacked meaning, and he'd been plagued by what he considered visions even during his waking hours. He'd stay awake and alone during the day, and his seizures worsened. One moment he'd be perched next to the others, and the next he was falling to the floor of the cave. The cage had split open with blood pouring from cracks in the stones, hundreds of wet little bodies raining from the gap in the cave, slamming into him from every direction. When Viggo tried reaching for the others, his chest had disintegrated and his skin had peeled from his body in sheets, dragging him down into nothing.
Then he'd come to with Dwayne pinning him to the ground by his shoulders and Marko patting at his face while Paul shouted at him with nothing he could understand. His mind was bleeding into his reality, and he couldn't tell if someone had been crying or if it was all just him. Nothing had left him. For what still crawled the walls, dripping from the ceiling in red raindrops, and for nearly an hour he couldn't explain what had happened to him.
Eventually he managed enough to tell David they needed to leave, but he'd refused, not believing Viggo. To David, it all looked like a psychotic break. Viggo had experienced hallucinations and nightmares before, why was this different? Viggo didn't take it well, and the two ended up having a massive fight where both of them had spat very uneducated, ignorant, and cruel things to one another.
After that, Viggo stopped sleeping with the colony and isolated himself heavily. He'd disappear into the lower tunnels, buried in the ruins closer to whatever he'd seen, with a mindless animalistic buzzing covering up the hivemind and taking over his frontal lobe. He'd dig night after night and day after day. He wouldn't come up to sleep during the days. His hands would split open before they could heal again, and dirt was packed beneath his claws. No one knew what Viggo was trying to find or achieve, but neither did Viggo. But beneath Santa Carla there was a deep and dark wound that had something to do with what was coming for Viggo.
Viggo wouldn't bother with Michael anymore, which had Mike extremely worried. Mike had only ever had good memories of Viggo in comparison to the other boys, while Viggo only associated the Emerson boy with the worst. By the time it was time for Viggo to leave, he had gotten what he'd thought he'd needed, which was one of Radu and Viktor's books within what Viggo didn't yet understand was a lot more than just a hidden room in the dirt. He'd fled the colony to sever himself in a panic to keep himself alive, only to feel Marko pluck him from his mind. Then Paul. Then Dwayne.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
After
Wip hah
After a traumatic feeding, Viggo was left more than weak, a giant gap in his chest slicing straight through him. He was back where he started, on his own, except it felt worse because he knew what was missing. He'd loved the boys, deeply, in every sense of the word. The wound in his chest wasn't healing …it should have. Vampires heal ! that's the entire point! But something dear to him had been scooped out with a spoon and left his heart refusing to close. He could still feel them, and he became obsessed with it. The things he had seen had already convinced him something terrible was coming; now, they convinced him something was unfinished.
He'd dragged his pitiful, frail body to the Emerson house on his hands and watched it sit empty and dark before finally forcing himself to pass the giant hole left in the wall. Everything had hurt him, but the house was covered in it, blood. His family was destroyed, and he was there to pick out the remains. The bathroom was probably the worst of it. Paul had been everywhere, there were pieces of him trapped in the drains and splattered along the walls. His hands trembling, Viggo started collecting bits of his flesh, hair, and bracelets… He wouldn't leave them there. The living room wasn't much better. Dwayne was scattered across the floor under broken wood and caught beneath the furniture. He'd spent hours trying to collect as much of it as he could. By the time dawn started threatening the horizon, he was still looking for David. There was nothing left of his remains or clothing or even blood. David's scent lingered throughout the house so strongly that it almost made him nauseous. Viggo searched every room. Then searched again. Then again. Nothing came up, leaving Viggo weakly calling out, hearing his own voice bounce back to him in the center of the house surrounded by scraps of the people he loved. He cried more over the fact that he couldn't find David than over the fact that everyone was gone.
The idea of David's body being taken and destroyed crushed Viggo. The buzzing in his head wouldn't leave him alone, and the hollow place in his mind where the hive had been felt eerily static. Viggo returned to his dock piling for a few days because he couldn't stay in the cave; even the piling became unlivable due to the cracks in the planks that would burn his skin when the sun hit them right. He ended up crashing at Max's empty home for a while. He'd found Thorn there, starving and about as feral as he was, and considered eating him. He couldn't bring himself to do it, and judging by the fact that Thorn had only bitten Viggo the normal amount, it could be assumed Thorn felt the same.
Nonetheless, Viggo found himself determined to bring back the boys no matter the cost.
𖦹Lexa (Lex) Miriam Faulkner from Santa Carla California.𖦹
(Ooc - this is an oc blog for The Lost Boys!! The character is a Banshee whose father works at the main mortuary (the funeral director, etc. I am most definitely gonna use lex for other fandoms, lmao. Im 18, so please be 16 or over to interact)
(Art of lexa is by the amazing and talented @alienbatsnack )
