( levy tran / female / she/her ) — THAO NGUYEN has been living in Port Leiry for THEIR WHOLE LIFE. They currently work as a TATTOO ARTIST/BODY MODDER/PIERCER, and are 43 years old. No one is sure if they’re actually a VAMPIRE or if they’re connected to KANEMARU. They tend to be quite DIFFICULT and HESITANT, but can also be OBSERVANT and PROTECTIVE.— ( dani / gmt / she/her / 29 / none )
BIOGRAPHY.
Before Skinner (B.S.):
Art school called to her; in fact, it seemed like everything was going her way, and she was going to get the hell out of dodge. She hadn't had a bad life growing up, not really, but Thao had to work hard for everything. Growing up in the foster system, she knew she had been incredibly lucky. Yes, there were a few bad homes before she was finally adopted at the age of seven, but she found her forever home with loving and supportive parents. Port Leiry was her home, and it hadn't done her wrong in life, yet it still felt so suffocating. She had been accepted into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was ready to finally start the rest of her life.
Thao didn't ever find out how long he had watched her before deciding she was what he needed, but as soon as she started to excel at school and her chosen career to fund her way through school, he forced his way into her life and took away any choice in the matter.
After Skinner (A.S.):
He compelled her to drop out, to focus solely on her tattoo artist career, but only for his needs. Before long, she was performing piercings and then body modifications. Thao was immensely skilled, a clear natural, but without the compulsion, she never would have been what she became. Soon seen as his right-hand man, completing his every bidding and encouraging others to do the same whenever they were in her chair.
As she grew older, there were a lot of things she missed out on: her thirtieth birthday, her parents' funerals, her life, but she didn't care. The only thing she was compelled to care about was Skinner, the work he was doing, and the work she was doing for him.
To this day, she believes he had her parents killed. The one distraction, the one tie to her humanity that she had left. It posed a threat to him, and Skinner didn't like that, or the prospect of somehow losing her and her work. The compulsion had doubled down after her parents' death; she never let herself grieve.
When her end was near and her death was coming, she felt relieved. That relief turned into terror as vampire blood was forced into her mouth before hands wrapped around her throat. Thao had begged, pleaded, until the very end. Until she awoke with a dead heart in her chest and a shame that ran so deep she wasn't sure she'd ever recover.
She did the only thing she knew how to do and set up her own tattoo studio, free from Skinner's cold, dead grasp. Inksignia was a way to make up for her past mistakes, even those she had no control over. She still listed all of her services, but they would be to willing and wanting participants only, and she also offers removals. They are free of charge for the list of Skinner's victims who are fortunate enough to still be alive.
She does not like being made a fool of. This thing has done something irredeemable. Oksana's lips curl over her fangs in an animal-like snarl. Gone is the quirky, friendly vampire and born from humiliation is the angry, traumatized one. She lifts her fingers - acrylics aimed like claws as she starts to reach down towards the person-thing. The voice of the new, tattooed friend rings through her mind and her head snaps up to Thao, eyes black and red.
The thing beneath them scrambles away in the seconds she's distracted. It would be easy to catch up to them, and easier still to rip it apart, but she stares at Thao. She could be a friend. Not an old one that traipses about and murders with her, but someone --
Oksana's mind is too fractured for real, true things. The blood fades out of her eyes and the teeth retract back into her gums. "You have fear."
"Yes, I have fear. Fear for what I don't know, and its consequences. I'm sure the first vampire bitten by a werewolf wishes they had the sense of fear keeping them well away." Thao reasoned, brow furrowed at Oksana's lack of concern about the unknown creature and its silver eyes.
It is gone now, though she can't shrug off the feeling of being watched as eyes stayed on the older vampire.
"Do you know what that was? Have you ever encountered anything with... with eyes like that?" Thao asks, hoping the elder has some answers. She hadn't been in this world long enough to learn about the creatures that went bump in the night right alongside them, aside from the wolves and witches.
Blue follows the vampire's moves only obstructed when she pulls on her sweater and starts brushing herself off. "Relax, I'd get more nutrition shoving my mouth full of sawdust. And I'm really not in the mood for a frolic through the snow chasing you." She grumbles out, frowning in disappointment when she realizes a hole in her sleeve.
"Others might not be as friendly though." She's hardly being friendly. But she jerks her head to the left. "I'm honestly not a hundred percent where we are. I don't have GPS, pretty sure." She reaches down and grabs a busted phone from the snow.
"Downside of a shift? No pockets." She crushes the device that much further and tosses it behind herself with little regard before looking around. "I think the trail is this way. Follow if you want. Or stick around for someone less hairy." With that said she starts on her way through the snow.
"I'd think the biggest downside would be the potential to freeze your ass off when you shift back." Thao murmurs in reply, watching the other crush the already broken phone and toss it aside. The vampire was nervous, scared even, but following a werewolf through their own territory seemed like the best way to get out of their quickly, without incident. The next person she stumbled across may not be as forgiving of her being there; she'd rather follow the person that didn't bite first and ask questions later.
The vampire follows behind, cautiously staying around five paces back so that she could make a run for it if needs be, but Thao knew that would just lead her to get even more lost. It seemed best to just try and stay on this ones good side. "It must uh, well I imagine when you're a wolf running through the wild, it's pretty freeing?" She questioned, trying to make non-offensive small talk without a clue as to whether she was succeeding or not.
Birdie unfolds a pack of cigarettes from her jacket, packing them against her inked palm and nodding in understanding as the fledgling - her fledgling - vents an ounce of her feelings.
Unrecognizable Thao had said. Everyone who ever crossed paths with that man is unrecognizable in one way or another. He's filth is - was - is sticky and filthy and caustic. Irrevocable. She doesn't voice this, because Thao knows. They both do - but confronting it is different.
In its own twisted way, it's a lucky run that her family was taken away quick. Parents, sister, and then, when she'd emerged from that hell a vampire, she'd taken her lover in the throes of thirst. For all the misery and all the woe, having nothing left had meant having nothing to lose, and without that she wouldn't have taken Skinner off the board. Still, looking at Thao, she wouldn't go back to it. Having someone to lose has been nice in its own way, even if it means death for her peace of mind.
She's about to answer - that yeah, Vampires puked, and it sucks because puking blood sucks, but then Thao finds out the hard way. It's not the first time she's watched somebody spill their shit, and her jaw clenches briefly at the sympathy.
At first she stays not talking, and sits in pitying observation, but the passenger door thumbs shut as she exits to round the vehicle, and offers a touch of compassion in rubbing at the woman's back. "You know we... feel shit differently - heavier. What feels good feels... you know, great. What feels bad though..."
What feels bad takes over everything, clouds everything that could possibly be good until it's all you can see. It's how she felt right now, but in this moment it would help her; her and Birdie could burn the last remnants of Skinner to the ground and Thao wouldn't have a hint of hesitation.
Thao allows herself to be comforted instead of shrugging Birdie's touch off her, somewhat surprised she'd gotten out of the car to be close enough to comfort her. When she finally has nothing else to bring up, she wipes at her mouth and offers her sire a thankful smile, "I know, that's why we need to get this out of the way, so that we can both put even more of him in our rear view mirror. I'm.. I'm good, thank you. C'mon, get back in, let's get going."
She puts herself back into the car, closing the door and waiting for Birdie to get back in, before driving to the second spot she had plotted out, a little closer to the outskirts of town.
"Know anything about this one?" Thao questions, undoing her seatbelt and taking the gun back from the center console.
Winter cocked his head to the side, looking confused. It wasn't a figure of speech he was familiar with, but then English wasn't his first language, anyway. "I didn't know," he said simply, shrugging.
He glanced again at his prey, and then back to Thao, smiling. "Have you ever taken time with your meal?" He asked. He meant it genuinely, not at all condescending, because he remembered the early days for himself as well. It wasn't like his first kill had been slow and comfortable. He'd been messy, too fast, too eager. Sometimes he still felt that way. "When you start drinking the blood, you become attached to the pulse. You can feel it. The blood flows to the steady beat of the heart, like a drum." Winter closed his eyes, as if imagining it now.
"It is strong, at first, usually. But it gets slower and weaker. I can usually feel that they are going to go unconscious before they do. Sometimes I can stop there, let them walk away, but usually I let them sleep. And then you stop, and they won't be dead." He explained, opening his eyes again. "Are you hungry?"
Thao shook her head no, fighting her urges to step even closer still as she watched the stranger, trying to listen to his words rather than the voices in her head telling her to finish off his meal.
"How do you concentrate for long enough to even focus on that? It's like... The moment the blood was in my mouth, everything else was quiet except the need for more of it. I don't think I even remember hearing their heartbeat after I bit them." She admitted, looking down at the ground to avoid his gaze, and the shame he felt.
She nods, tearing her eyes away from the body and back to Winter, "I usually carry around an insulated sippy cup, very twenty-first century of me, I guess, but it's better than a blood bath."
"Broad daylight?" Winter questioned, looking genuinely confused for a moment as he looked around at the darkness of night around him. It was all he knew anymore. He hadn't seen 'broad daylight' in...what was it, five years now? Six? He could never remember. It hardly mattered when he knew what forever looked like for him now. Smiling, though still a bit puzzled, he looked at Thao again. "He was too drunk to remember me, or what happened here. He will think he passed out during a hookup," he pointed out, laughing to himself. And he was very sure on how drunk the other had been, because he could feel the alcohol in his blood now.
He nodded, suddenly looking cheerful again. "I usually leave them alive, yes! I do not like killing. Unless they are bad to me," Winter explained, looking over his shoulder at his unconscious prey. "He was not bad to me."
"It's a figure of speech." She murmured; she had meant in public rather than anything else. A hook-up in an alleyway? This one must have picked some classy guy to feed from. Yet her eyes kept darting back to the human, no matter how much she tried to get them to stay focused on the vampire.
The dangers were forgotten as he answered her question, and though she wanted to step closer, she wouldn't allow herself to, because then she might move straight past the vampire and sink her teeth into the other's sloppy seconds.
"How do you know when to stop, so that you don't kill them?" She had tried once before, but she couldn't get it right. She had gotten the timing all wrong, or perhaps she had gotten it right but then didn't want to stop. She didn't remember much of her first feeding; it was all a blood-fuelled haze.
She doesn't feel quite right, something just beneath able to break free after…there is no real tell of how much time has passed, just an undeniable truth that the wolf has been restless and ready to pounce at any given moment. As if the endless winter was aggravating it. She knows the others can feel it too, something about this silvered mirror of a moon has all the wolves on edge, born and bitten alike.
The stench of death that permeates the closed space, combined into a putrid concoction of fear that rolls off the humans in sweat and tears makes her tenser. Makes them all that much more aggravated and ready to start a war, something that will all roll down into gore and dust. Death in a place meant to ensure survival.
She's calming a younger wolf, another from her pack, newer, struggling when her ears pick-up what seems to be the one leading the vampires, warning them, she looks around in a silent warning as if telling her half of the room much the same.
This isn't the place. This isn't the time.
She feels ill-equipped for this, still learning. Still following the orders of an alpha, but when the vampire asks who is taking charge of the mismatched pack she doesn't hesitate to step forward.
"I will." She says before looking over her shoulder. "Any issues?" She has the wit to ask, receiving head shakes and weary glances.
Fake it until you make it, Barrios.
"You're right, we need to work together, grudges can be put aside. We have a common enemy. I've fought one before and it nearly took me and another woman out."
Ethan didn't care what the supposed leaders of each group were saying -- whether they were leaders or not, he'd appointed them in his head. His own group had their weapons drawn the moment they realized just how many there were around them. Ethan's own bow out and pulled back, an arrow he'd made himself ready to be fired.
The Hunter didn't care that the Vampire looked familiar. It wasn't as if he was friends with her, nor anyone else there. "Fuck that shit. Any of you step forward towards any of us and I will kill you on the fucking spot." He, along with his group, would not be giving out anything for the supernaturals around them. He wouldn't allow it.
Work together. That earned them a laugh from Ethan. "You mean fuck us over so that you all can save yourselves?" He'd never trusted a supernatural to keep their word. It was why he tended to shoot arrows and then ask questions later. "No thanks. I think we can handle it on our own." Whatever the fuck it was, outside. It wasn't as if they weren't used to fighting for their lives every single day.
Ethan's outburst surprised her, though she tried her best to hide it as she took a step back, arms outstretched to urge her kind to do the same. Brows furrow in confusion, a glance towards the one who had stepped forward for the wolves. She looked young, but Thao knew that looks could be deceiving, and age didn't matter if you had a good head on your shoulders. It seemed this one did, though the matter of being able to control the wolves was yet to be seen.
Eyes go back to Ethan, and they're hardened now, "Are you thickheaded or just thick, hm? If a wolf is telling you these things almost took her out, how do you think humans will do up against them? If the only way to save ourselves is to work together, don't you think we'd keep our word? If survival depends on it, you should be able to trust us for at least the time it takes to get out of here. You can't handle these. A pack of wolves and a small horde of vampires just ran from them."
She paused, trying her best to calm herself down as she started to reassess the situation. If this human was intent on keeping tensions high, this could go wrong long before the creatures made their way closer to them.
"We met outside my tattoo shop, just the other day. If I wanted to kill you, if I had any interest in killing you, I would've done it then. Right now, I'm pretty sure the only thing we all care about is getting out of this shit situation." Some vampires were getting antsy, and a glance back to the wolves told her it was the same for them, too.
Fuck this.
"If he wants to put his pride above survival, then fine, but we can work together. We can get out of here, still. We don't need them, we're stronger. We can protect all of us, regardless of whether he trusts us or not. You said this thing almost beat you - how did you beat it?" @braverycursed
Birdie's seen it before - the way people break. Once her body'd been used up by Skinner, by the people who paid Skinner for what women like her had - when she'd been so busted up and hollowed out by loveless sex and the corrosion of the substances it took to keep her stupid and in line, she'd been fed enough vamp blood to get her on her feet and then she'd been dragged along on the same violent, late night door-knocking affairs that had created her.
It was hard at first - Birdie wonders, if Skinner just stopped compelling people at some point - if that's the only reason Thao hasn't learned until now just what all had come to pass - what was intended.
There's a bit of envy in her at the notion, but nothing the supercedes the empathy or the guilt - like as not she'd have done Thao the bigger favor by leaving her in an open field to find the sun instead of leaving her in that apartment.
That guilt weighs heavy, heavy enough that Birdie turns enough to get out of the way and doesn't protest when Thao starts to douse the place.
She gives a quick scan about the place - considers stuffing as much of the files in that drawer as she can under her arm, but it's pointless - they're hurt or dead or something worse.
It's another hard lesson she gets to learn in a lifetime course on too little too late.
So she follows, shouldering the shotgun and waits at the edge of the property, texting shitty selfies to Lara, as if she isn't on the edge of a nervous breakdown. When Thao shows back up, she can smell fire. "You gonna be alright?" She asks. She knows, first hand, what too much feeling can do to them.
Birdie had made her way up the steps without question, and Thao lit the match. She watched the fire engulf the place, spreading into each corner and licking at the walls. She had stayed and watched it work, almost mesmerised, almost for too long until the smoke irritated her dead lungs and she had the sense to get out until she burned with it.
She made her way to the car, opening the driver's side and setting the gun down in the middle of them, as Birdie had done before.
"I want to bring him back to life, tear strips of his skin and flesh off in the most unpleasant ways, and feed them to him, then let him heal and do it all again," she spoke, voice shaking with anger, "but yeah, I'm fine. We have two more places to hit." She was good at shoving the trauma down, but even as she started the engine of Birdie's truck, the tears stung her eyes.
She sits unmoving, the only sound being the engine idling, knuckles turning white with how hard she grips the wheel.
"They were unrecognisable, Birdie."
Thao didn't need to say more; she was sure Birdie had seen more of Skinner's work than she ever had done. Imagining it was enough, was better. At least it wouldn't be the real thing. She had to know what was in that file, but now she felt like she could throw up everything in her system. Did vampires throw up? She didn't know the answer, but she felt like she was going to. "I don't know if we can be sick, but I think I'm about to be." She flings the truck door back open and starts heaving.
Oksana does listen to Thao's explanation, but tilts her head towards her as if it doesn't quite make sense. Her eventual conclusion about this Thao person is that perhaps she has no where else to go, and also that she needs to let loose far more than just a little. Maybe she won't be the one do it. After all, she has plenty of plans and schemes to juggle, adding a project onto her list may make it topple.
But she does create a mental folder for this silly, tattooed vampire.
"Yes, yes, you watch. Take notes." She taps her temple, as if to say: commit it all to memory. But she quickly turns toward the person walking through the snow. They don't seem to mind that there are two creatures of the night walking behind them. So Oksana simply walks up and starts a conversation. At first, she tries to compel them -
Only, they bolt instead of standing still. "Fuck!" She calls, and starts to run after them, getting ahead in a blink, and shoving them to the ground. The eyes catch the light and glare silver. "What are you?"
She follows silently, watches the encounter silently, but when they bolt, she lets out a little shocked gasp; she hadn't known people could resist compulsion, but there was a lot she still had to learn.
Thao runs after Oksana, standing back slightly as she watches the encounter between her and the one with the silver eyes. "I don't like this." She spoke, voice shaking as she looked between the two of them. She didn't know much about the supernatural world other than vampires, wolves, and witches, but she was sure whatever this person was didn't make the list.
"Oksana, please, let's just go. You can teach me on someone else."
She's stuffing her left foot into a woolen sock, planted in the snow, pants two layers thick and still the snow creeps into her bones. The shifts are becoming increasingly brutal in whatever winter hell hole they've found themselves in. Maybe she should have just stayed in fucking Europe. Fled to somewhere in the mountains away from her family and all their bullshit. She's still coming to terms with Felicity being the cause of their father's death. Still feels betrayed by the older blonde.
At least with whatever has been happening with the phone signals she's had a break from Casper's constant messages and calls, how he kept getting her number no matter what she tries unnerves her. The paranoid bit of her wonders if both of her siblings are simply conspiring against her.
She's taken from her thoughts, fingers lacing up her boots, by a dazed looking vampire. Her eyes narrow in suspicion, unsure of what the woman is doing in Warwick territory, let alone so far out in the woods. "I couldn't tell you the exact location, but I can tell you these woods aren't safe for your kind. You'll figure your way out of them if you have any wits about you." She stands and brushes off her pants, before scooping up a thick wool sweater.
Her eyes widened upon realising just what she'd stumbled onto, really not wanting to meet her final death in a situation like this. Thao backs up slightly, arm coming out to balance herself against a tree as she carefully watches the wolf. If she needs to run again, she can, but she feels almost exhausted, and she'd rather talk her way out of this.
"I didn't mean to come here. I was chased. I don't want any trouble." Thao blurts out, looking around to try to gain her bearings so she can get the hell out of there. "Please, can you just... point me in the direction? I really don't want to be out here." She was young, and wolves almost terrified her. She had her life taken from her once before she was ready; she didn't want that to happen again, and from what she knew, a wolf bite was an incredibly slow and painful way to go.
Birdie's kicking around piles of refuse in the cell room - makeshift rigs meant to hold somebody in place making her expression contort into discomfort and squeamish recollection.
No bodies, at least, is good.
Birdie had done work to chase Skinner here, out of the Nevada desert, further north, further west. A dog chasing down a dirty hare, she had kicked the door in on many such places, always a step behind her target but just in time to run afoul of his cronies.
She hopes - maybe with futility - that the emptiness of this place means him being gone has wiped his smear off the map, but absence of power creates a vacuum; this she knows.
Thao's voice calls her name and she turns, a flash of recollection; needles in her skin, Birdie Birdie Birdie. It'll look so good. It'll make him happy, seeing his name on you. She shakes it away, stepping out of the room and into the office, sizing the file up before closing the space between the two of them.
A tilt of her head follows. She moves to the same drawer, fishing through, and finds another one, then another - names that are familiar, names that aren't.
She wonders if there was ever something like this on her - by now, it's all burnt away; her family, her old life, anything she might have ever been without all of this - dead potential.
"Be sure you wanna look at that," she says idly, looking at the contents of another file, stomach turning as she scans the words and images, credit reports, bank accounts, addresses, medical info. "Be really fucking sure, Thao."
She's ready to open it, fingers already probing at the edge of the pages to drink down the file's contents as Birdie's words reach her. The older vampire is right; whatever is in this file, whether good or bad, she can't take back the bliss of ignorance or the hope that somehow, her parents are still alive or that, at the least, their deaths were quick.
Thao had never been good with impulse control; even when they were younger, despite having big dreams and fighting for them, she would make dumb decisions at most turns based entirely on impulse. This was a dumb decision, she knew that, but she opened the file anyway.
The first page contained her basic information and picture, and the plans that Skinner had for her - he had executed them almost right to the tee, yet even he couldn't foresee his death and her turn. Upon turning to the next page, her jaw steeled, teeth grinding as she was confronted with pictures of what he did to them.
She shut the file, shoving it into her jacket, and marched towards Birdie, grabbing the gas cannister from her and recklessly flinging the liquid around the room. She trailed it through the corridor she'd made her way up from, right to the base of the steps, "Let's go, Birdie." Thao ordered, only a small recognition in her that she had no right to be ordering the other around as she lit a match.
Birdie gets out of the car, hoisting the strap of the shotgun around her shoulder, dipping back into the truck before returning to follow quietly behind Thao.
"Every roach has to have a hole or two to scurry into," she says.
Thao tears off the lock, and before they go in, Birdie holds the pistol from the truck seat up. "I get it, pea shooters don't matter, but they still hurt. Take it." An ounce of prevention or whatever. Birdie follows behind Thao, the contents of the gas can in her other hand sloshing about, providing their descent with an strange score.
The basement into which they descend is dank and dark. Couches dot the first room, an old TV, a desk littered with money bands, drugs, and viles of stale blood. Birdie tries a pull-chain for a light but there's no power. Setting down the gas can, she unshoulders her shotgun, flipping off the safety as she peers down a hallway lined with rooms, most seemingly empty. "Door at the end of the hall, probably some kinda office or safe-room or something. Probably check there."
She looks with some level of disgust at the small rooms lining the basement hallway. They look like small cells - most with little more than a rotten mattress inside. "Blood farm, maybe. Or worse." Memories - unpleasant ones - flood into her mind.
Thao takes the gun, with no time for hesitation or to explain that she'd never shot one in her life. Her knowledge was from TV shows and movies - all she had to do was make sure the safety was off, aim, shoot, prepare for the recoil... right? Hopefully she didn't have to use it. Birdie was right though, it was good in a pinch as a delay tactic. They still felt pain, and would want to dig out the bullet as soon as possible so that they could heal.
She looks around, seeing nothing of worth, her nose filled with the scent of stale blood. It was something she had never smelled before, as a vampire; it was enough for nausea to rise up her throat. Birdie unshoulders the shotgun and Thao suddenly remembers danger could be lurking, clicking the safety of her own gun but keeping her finger off the trigger, for now.
Nodding, she starts towards the office, slowly. Thao does what they do in the shows, weapon steadied in front of her and checking each corner of the room before proceeding to the office door. It's locked, or jammed, she isn't sure which but with one swift kick it's open, hinges broken.
Probably worse than a blood farm, but Thao couldn't think about that. There was no one here now, no one they could save; whatever happened, it was done with.
The office was just that, papers strewn across the desk, filing cabinets along the wall and a half-finished bottle of whiskey on the desk. Clearly, someone had thought they'd be returning here. The papers on the desk were of no importance, invoices long paid for services rendered an age ago, so she moved to the filing cabinet opening drawers and flicking through the files until something popped out at her.
"Birdie." She pulls out the file and turns it to show her. In bold letters on the tab, 'THE ARTIST.'
A passionate affair with revenge is cheap theatre when one could build a castle of intention in its stead. Impulsivity is costly, when it looks like it might spill dark into day. But there is a certain appeal to the stakes of risk, dancing on the knife's edge and hoping it will not cut. He watches the prideful assault as a heavy shadow beneath the streetlight. It appears unchorographed, a slash, and a crash; he is the soon-to-be director, watching an audition. Flesh slathered across brick, and bitter words ripped from a scorned woman's lips.
Zakar taps a cigarette out of a box and props it between his lips, eyes flicking up and down the alleyway, during the scene. The smoke stays unlit, even as the box vanishes into a coat pocket once again. He does not have the script or the blueprints to follow along with her story.
But it is no matter, when a heart sits blackened in an angry palm.
It would have always ended this way; the opening monologue had been needless. A youthful dead girl, still on the backend of a war she's refused to let go of.
"Well, which one of you laid down first?"
Deserve has no purpose here. Zakarias thinks that is an inconsequential detail. Dust does not get to have regrets, or a changed fate. Ash is ash. Did her man expect to taste brickdust, since he conceded so blindly to this woman. If that is the case, what is deserved is not an immortal existence if he squanders it with quick, lazy gratification.
There's poetry to a pile of dist between them, and it provokes Zakar to finally light the straight in his mouth. Fire is the start and end of many things; symbolic, magical, in some regions. A habit that is smoke rings, and half-smiles. In this case, it's boredom.
"And who would you belong to, that lets you roam so carelessly?" He says, around the smoke. She's making messes like she is an animal; if that s the case, she could eat and choke on the ash of her fallen, so she knows to clean up her trail of breadcrumbs. Two fingers pull the cigarette from his mouth, "Let me guess," It isn't hard. "You like to think you belong to nothing." A free agent, which means she is protected by nothing, too.
His shoulder remains pressed against the streetlamp, and his eyes train on the killer of her own kind. He's found that Port Leiry is a cesspool of ferality, and draws the shadowed belly of the underworld to whatever ley lines, and power linger beneath the soil. He knows why he has returned, but all else does not share his reasoning. He knows that, the same as he knows the stillness of his heart, and the violence of his mind.
She tried to assess the other, as though she had anything to base thoughts on, drawing an inevitable blank. It wasn't as though she had ever been much of a social creature, by choice or not, and he, like many, was one she didn't recognise.
"He did, a long time ago, many times." Thao spoke, her held still held high. It didn't matter what he had done to her; all that mattered is she had ended it, the victor, able to handle her own whilst Skinner's minions skulked and hid in the shadows. A flash of a thought came to her mind that she pushed down violently: What if they had been a pawn, suffering the same as her and Birdie had, and Thao had chosen to end their life because of it without explanation? Though, would a pawn be so willingly cruel? So willingly vile? This one was acting of his own accord, she felt it deep down. He just found himself to be nothing without his leader... A free agent, ready for the consequences of actions long thought forgotten.
Thao was about to open her mouth to state she belonged to nobody, not anymore, but she supposed that wasn't true. She had always seen belonging to someone as a negative - being a belonging, or a possession. It wasn't like that with Kanemaru, with Birdie. It was a choice, and as cliche as it sounded, a family. One that had happily taken her in when she presented herself back into the world.
Hesitation still sits in the forefront, though. She knows nothing about this stranger, not knowing where he belongs and the consequences of her answer if it's wrong in his mind.
"I'm not a free agent." Thao answers diplomatically, giving no more than that. Surprising, considering her monologue when killing someone she considered her enemy.
The gap stays between them, neither moving to close it, but the stranger is between her and freedom; stood in the mouth of the alley. She imagined there were tunnels, perhaps that's where her victim had been heading, but she didn't wish to end up lost in the underbelly of the city either.
"Who do you belong to?" The question that she left unanswered turned back on him, eyes watching for any indication of a sudden movement and her mind calculating escape routes should she need them.
She brought them there, she's responsible for this, for them. It's a responsibility she doesn't want as a fledgling, but it's hers and she needs to play this right.
"Enough!" She shouts over the parroting vampires, arguing with wolves and humans as they look around one another. "You are right, we don't know if any of us are who we say we are, we don't know these creatures, but if we lose our shit we're going to lose more people than if we just keep a cool head and wait."
If they waited for someone to make a wrong move, to be detected, and worked together to resolve the threat it would be easier. Yet, they were vampires, some of them hungry with humans in front of them, and some of them who hated wolves. "You eat those humans without consent or make a move against a wolf that isn't self-defence and I'll rip your heart out myself, do you hear me? I don't care what clan you are, or who you think you are." She had only done it once, to someone that had wronged her - Thao didn't know if she could follow through on the threat, but these vampires didn't know her, and she was hoping the threat would be enough.
Looking to Ethan, she offers an expression that she can only hope portrays an apology for how some of her kind were acting. Still, she walks to him and dips her voice, "Depending how long we're in here, these vampires might need volunteers to allow a few mouthfuls of blood, to save a bloodbath from happening." Her own control was... a work-in-progress. She was fine, as long as she had her over glamourised sippy cup in hand, but she didn't, not this time. If blood was shed and she was hungry enough, Thao wasn't sure she would be able to keep that trauma-induced perfected control she'd worked so hard to gain.
"Which wolf is stepping forward to speak for you all? That's the only way this has a chance of working." She asks, turning to look at the wolves.
Birdie nods as the car rolls along through the cold. "I get it." She'd been given that closure the night it had all happened. There's a mean-spirited, jaded part of her that wants to set the expectations basement-level, but she's come to the realization that, for the walking dead, there's no such thing as false hope if it keeps you on the wagon. So she just nods in understanding.
The subject changes as they near their first destination, something she's thankful for. "Most places I cleared out were pretty desolate," she says, opening the glove box and pulling out another pistol in a holster. She places it on the seat between them.
Birdie'd spent the years between her death and her arrival in Port Leiry as a traitor to her own kind, stalking vampires connected to Skinner and extracting information from them with a biblical prejudice. "I don't think he cared to trap most of them but maybe here he got more paranoid." She checks her phone one more time before turning it off. "Guy always preferred putting on a show, who knows."
The gun makes her nervous, even if she knows normal bullets can't hurt her, but Thao has a feeling that the gun isn't loaded with your everyday ammo. She sets the nerves aside, deciding to put the trust in Birdie even if neither of them have fully earned that yet, and keeps her focus on the road. It's not long until she's pulling up on the side of the road and motioning at an alleyway between two storefronts.
"Mm, so I heard." The fledgling comments, stepping out of the car and making her way towards the alley. "There's a cellar entrance just up here, one of his less than finer hideouts, but it was close to town for emergencies, I suppose." She shrugs, not pretending to know what Skinner's true motivations for each of them would have been. Honestly, she didn't care to know either; she just wanted them gone.
Reaching down, Thao rips away the padlock and chain on the cellar door and looks to Birdie. She counts to three in her head, throwing the doors open and checking for any obvious sign of recent life. Not seeing any, she steps down, descending into the abyss. This couldn't take all day, she doubts either of them has the time or the energy for that, so it would be a quick look through anything left there to see if anything was remotely useful, then burn the place, she imagines. Make sure that no one can ever make use of it, or Skinner, again.
"I--" Her brow furrowed as she thought about it. Had she walked past Satin Caberet before and noticed that? Thao couldn't remember. "Honestly, I'm not sure. I'll take your word for it. I was just invited there by a friend, and so it's the first thing that came to mind."
The stranger changed her mind, and it caused the young vampire to falter slightly, but a rain check was probably for the best. At least then she could see what Satin Caberet was all about before deciding whether she was taking someone there or not.
"Sure, we can do that." She smiled, taking the phone and inputting her number and name, saving the contact.
"I mean, we can go. I'm not judgy."
It's partially a joke. Partially. She is judgy, but not about that stuff. She does notice the sink in the woman's shoulders though, and takes a breath. She's either got the wrong idea, or given the wrong idea. Neither are intended or beneficial.
Aelita takes her phone back, and - as if to show Thao she's not ghosting, she immediately sends a text to the number;
😜
"Keep me posted," she says, before checking the number again, "Thao. I'm Lita."
With a wink of her own, Aelita skips backwards a few paces before slinging her stuff over her shoulder. She's not sure what kind of fish is on her hook here, but she's excited to find out.
@zlomidze / if you think this song is about you, it probably is by destroy rebuild until god shows
Darkened alleys and tunnels through the city were a breeding ground for those who were hiding from the light of day, and those who had a reason to go to ground and stay hidden. Thao had envisioned a lot of scenarios since she had died, but not one of them had included laying eyes on one of Skinner's old crew. Anger flashed through her, and before she could really think things through, she was following the beast into the underbelly of Port Leiry.
Catching up to him, she attacked from behind, pinning him up against the closest wall and shoving his face into the brick.
"Be honest, did you ever mention my name?" She spat, shoving him again as though the brick would give way to the thick skull in her grip. "Do you even remember me? Are you hiding because you got sick of the shame? I remember you."
A growl left her lips, her free hand digging into his back, nails slowly breaking skin that gave way to flesh that should have been long since dead.
"You told me to stay put, reminded me why I was there. It was a chance to prove who you were, who you could be for him." Thao lurched forward as his hand broke through muscle and bone, fingers finally clamped around the heart in the other's chest as blood pooled around her wrist, dripping to the floor.
"Did you lie on your back like a whore?" The fledgling snarled mockingly, spouting his own words back to him, words he had spoken when he couldn't believe someone like Thao was at the right hand of Skinner. He was given no chance to reply, his heart ripped from his chest, his body falling to the floor with a thump once she let go.
She turned, almost unbelieving of what she'd done, as the heart rolled from her grip to join the lifeless body, eyes locking with a stranger watching her.
