Being looked at like some sort of a ghost wasn’t a novel experience to Juneau. Alder had looked at her like some sort of a cursed phantom, a look of understanding rather than pity. She was not sure how to describe how Julian had looked at her once he learned she was a Vuldak; surprised and unsurprised, with an understanding that she was a dead thing but devoid of disgust. Adrian had looked as haunted as she had felt in those early days. In those days, she was alive, but on borrowed time with a toll to pay every month. If there was another shoe to drop in her second attempt at a life on the edge of the Elvhen’s blade, Juneau was still waiting for it. And she chose to live in the comfort of ignorance. And she did that–she lived, no longer a consciousness haunting a corpse in stasis.
Jamie was likely as averse to acts of affection as she was, but she set Ness down and approached Jamie anyway. Juneau leaned into him, an awkward and stiff hug between two individuals who had hardly had reason to practice such embraces in their lives. But it wasn’t about comforting him with the hug, but rather the reassurance that she was material and real, and not paper thin.
“I’ll keep coming back,” she promised, her tone similar to that of a petulant adolescent begging for additional trust and freedom. She knew Jamie would grant it to her, but she didn’t want it to come at the cost of his worry. “I will be. There are people out there I can trust. And I always come back.” Her arms crossed and she cocked one hip to the side. Juneau did not mean to dismiss or minimize what had happened on the ship, but it seemed it would take some sort of cosmic force to wipe her from the face of Taravell for good. “You would have been fine. You would have looked out for Adrian. But I did come back, and not just to have to struggle against a fate I never asked for.” But then again, Juneau had not asked to be enlightened that some power existed out there that could cleanse the Blight from a soul–and as much as she hated the idea of being a hero, she couldn’t stop thinking about whether or not it was possible to find a way to spare others of the Blight, too. "But if you're that worried and you want to lock me in this room and this is all just an elaborate trap, no time like the present."
For once it doesn't take a second, the moment she's shuffled up to him, he's putting an arm around her just as stiffly. If Adrian had been home to see, he was sure it would have been a laughable sight. But it worked for them. She's there and she's solid and he can hear a heart beating in her chest. It was funny to think that he'd never once thought the lack of it was a problem until he realized the familiarity in the silence was gone. It'd become a complete cold stranger to him on that boat. He'd never really lost anyone, not really. Now in a way, her being there beside him really meant that was true. "I've never really had much tae lose before ye an' him." Jamie admits, lips pursed into a thin line, his hand on her shoulder offering the most tentative squeeze. "Nae something I'd like tae experience again." But he is young yet by vampire standards. Loss was part of it, the penance for what he was. "Ye'll come back, I know ye will." "Besides," Looking to the little black furball in the middle of the floor, his brow raised. "He's actually the trap."













