dead girl walking

[nadiacattaneo]

Nadia glanced up, amused. She may hate the Fae, but the same sentiments couldn't help but flow to vampires too. And Nadia, even with the small sense of softness that hadn't seen her fling the woman back into the ocean, couldn't be mistaken for a good person. "Please, come in." She gestured to the seat on the other side of her desk, upholstered in a flush green velvet. They may be on a ship, but that didn't stop Nadia's desire for elegance, the appreciation of beautiful things.

[livpendragon]

The spell written into the laws of the universe broke, and Liv stepped across the threshold into the Captain's quarters. Liv had a taste for elegance as well; it had been a while since she had indulged it. Her fingertips brushed against the green velvet and she sighed, her shoulders relaxing down her back. She looked over her shoulder at the Captain. "Thank you," she said first. "I'm indebted to your kindness. I'll never forget it." An immortal promise, with all the practiced charm of a purebred politician. "I would never expect free passage — I can work night's onboard your ship for the length of my stay. I have fed off of rats," and much, much worse, "and would keep your supplies clear of them."

[rohawkins]

Usually, and she truly meant it when she thought usually, Ro was always the first to let go. Something about her spirit had her keeping distance between as many people as possible, and being the first person to let go had become a part of her personality. The viciousness in the way she moved through the world. But she would have stood there for hours on that street, the sun moving through its cycles, the moon making its presence known. Time, for a mortal, was something that they knew intimately. But time didn't seem to matter at all when death itself had been so gloriously cheated in a way that would make someone become religious.

Ro knew, at the very least, that Alexander would get over being temporarily ditched. She loved him, and it was pointless to begin fretting about potential disasters in that part of her life when something so vital had appeared. The only real issue was the hope it levied against her like a tsunami. Could she actually manage to have it all? Could the universe be turning back around in her favor? The thought made her laugh as she stood staring at Liv, her heart beating so wildly she was she it could burst.

"Let's go to mine. It's a shitty little place on the outskirts of town, but it's either this or I immediately introduce you to my boyfriend." She smiled a real smile, no hesitations, no hiding behind facades and fear. "My bike is a few blocks away. We can keep you as inconspicuous as you want." And if there was anything Ro suddenly realized, it was that Liv being alive was quite literally against everything that the current Pendragon family wanted. It meant that right now, they were playing with fire.

"Let's hit the road, Jack."

[livpendragon]

Just a few short words but they held so much information. Ro had lived so much life now without her. Apartments she had never left fingerprints in, boyfriends she had never met... and it broke her heart. Broke it in the way the doctor breaks your arm again when you took too long to get there and it didn't set right. Broke it so when it healed again it healed better.

Olivia smiled through the pain of all that absence and meant it. They had been on each others minds, she knew that much, so hadn't a version of her been there, really? The way Ro had been with Liv every time she'd needed to borrow strength on the long, perilous journey back. "Oooh," she made a sound like an angry hamster, balled her fists, and then dove straight back in for another hug, danger and timelines forgotten. "You're really you." She pulled back and looked her all over and was so relived.

Liv flopped a hood over her hair and slipped on a pair of sunglasses from the hoodie pocket. It was obvious and weak, but it was what she had. In a way, Liv had to wonder if she wasn't asking to be caught. Perhaps she wanted a fight she was too scared to ask for outright. This wasn't the way though.

"Those bikes are a death trap, Ro," Liv found herself saying on to way to ride it. Her voice dropped to a whisper with the disguise in place. Equally as mystifying, which is to say not at all. "One wrong turn and they're grafting skin from your butt cheeks onto your forehead. " Of course, Liv had already lost this argument so many times it was not an argument anymore but a greeting. Hello. So much has happened. Nothing has changed.

Voice still a hissed whisper that was anything but covert, "And did you just say the B-word!?"

[nadiacattaneo]

It was rare, but it had happened before. When you were immortal, nothing was new. Someone coming to the ship to seek passage - whether they were looking for a way home or a way out, it didn't really matter. Usually though, they had the money for passage, and weren't half dead.

She glanced at the woman, considering, before turning to two of her crew. "Help her up. Get her some dry clothes, then meet me in my quarters." With that she turned and left, settling back at her desk. That wasn't an agreement, but she had too much of a conscious to throw the woman back out to see in the state she was currently in. She'd hear her out, then make her decision.

[livpendragon]

Liv didn't protest when the crew's grip was a little too hard, when they held her a little bit out from them and craned their necks away from her on instinct while shuffling her through the ship. Not even when they shoved her into a storage room and slammed the door behind her as she changed, wondering all the while if she hadn't walked into her own grave willingly. Again.

It seemed not though, because they let her out just as soon as she knocked, the dry clothes only somewhat sticking to her salty skin uncomfortably. They fit poorly, but Liv didn't mind that kind of thing anymore.

The crewmembers knocked at the cabin door, and this time did not shove her inside but Liv almost wished they had. Her feet felt like cement at the threshold. She cleared her throat, and looked at her feet almost remorsefully. "Erm... you have to invite me in."

[rohawkins]

They could've continued standing there, a space between them that felt immovable and impenetrable. Ro could've kept the distance, built a wall, protected herself from some inevitability that she almost always expected. But the more Liv spoke, the more she knew that if this was a trick being played on her, it was one she was more than willing to stomach. Because even if it was bad news in the end, for a moment she could believe that her best friend in the entire world was alive from the dad. That what was dead was alive again, and the world would be all the brighter for it. What had life taught her over the last year if only to love that much harder? To let people in, and to stop being more mountain than person.

Ro stepped forward, barely taking in any of the words that Liv was speaking (She was certain her brain was shortcircuiting), and she tugged Liv into what might have been considered tightest hug ever recorded. Even if the record books may have never written it down on paper, it was crushing, and brutal, like at that very moment she was hoping to learn the entire tale through the action. Like the closer they became, the more she might be able to understand the impossibility of it all.

"This doesn't make any sense," Ro mumbled into the air, head shaking as the hug kept going, her arms unable to fold back into her own space. Not when Liv was right there.

[livpendragon]

All the cold air escaped her lungs, she deflated like a balloon with a slow leak into the space of warmth Ro's embrace offered. A thousand conversations to have, a million sentences to volley back and forth. The hundreds they'd already had and the hundreds she'd imagined to keep herself going. All of that, and she couldn't think of a word to say. Liv's arms wrapped more gently around Ro's torso than Ro's did her. Aware of the ribs, aware of the heart beating within. Her palms made an X over the space on her friend's back where the heart was, felt it pulse in the palm of her hands beneath the spine, strong and fast like a bird. Easier to break.

"Best friends forever means best friends forever." She favored the naive answer, because it was more beautiful. "I hope you didn't think I'd let a little thing like dying break us apart." With the back of her hand, she wiped away a falling tear. I'm sorry I kept a secret like this.

Sooner than she would have liked to, Liv gave a last squeeze, rubbed her palm soothingly against the grains of Ro's shirt, and pulled away. Liv released a shaky breath, her features melting into a watery smile. "I didn't mean to grab you off the street. I just saw you and—" Liv shrugged, Ro would know what she meant. "Can we..." she glanced around, "maybe go somewhere? I am technically keeping a low profile." Shamefully, she hadn't considered yet what to do about... well, anything. Anything but this. Find Ro. Find Ro. Find home. They planned better together.

[rohawkins]

The whiplash was brutal, stunning. The kind of thing that would have pushed anyone else down onto their knees in an act of begging agains the god's above. Ro knew, in her heart, that was was happening shouldn't be possible. That after years of hurting, licking at her wounds, vowing revenge, she couldn't possibly be staring straight into Liv's eyes. Madness was a better explanation. She had been with Alexander for too long, and his own bouts of it surely were rubbing off on her. But this? Her heart lurched, her stomach turned, and her eyes began inexplicably leaking. Water pouring out of them without cause or necessity. Ro was crying, and she desperately wished she could stop.

"Liv?" Her voice was small, minuscule, more equivalent to a mouse than a person. She was squeaking when she should've been roaring, but if Ro was anything, she was skeptical. Sometimes eyes lied, and believing in anything blindly never suited her. But the hands were still burned onto her, and the memory of Alexander's face was quickly replaced of one that resembled an apparition from a life that she thought had been placed behind her.

Ro choked on her own words, the noises wrestling in her throat. "You—how?" There were better questions to ask in this circumstances. Questions that may have garnered better answers. But she was struck frozen, torn between a deep sense of relief and joy, and the kind of fear that maybe this was just another trick of the light. The kind of insanity that a doctor would surely love to diagnose. How could this be real? How could Liv be there?

[livpendragon]

The trouble with imagining things before they happened was it gave you a false sense of security. For instance, Liv had spent almost all of the last few years imagining this moment. So many times had she played and replayed, edited and redacted and played again how it might go. She’d imagined it so much she almost hadn’t been nervous stepping foot back in Obsidian City. Yet now that it was happening she knew she had been wrong. There was no preparing for emotions, they would always take you by surprise. They would always be both stranger and bigger than you thought.

It was why she started to laugh. A surprised sound at first, like she wasn’t sure, and then it snowballed. Liv slapped a hand over her mouth, but her watering eyes were still there to give her away. “I’m sorry I— I don’t know know why I’m laughing it’s just—“ Liv stepped back as if to take all of Ro in and then stepped forward as if to hug her, chickening out at the last second and dropping her heels ridgidly to the ground. “I can’t believe it’s really you.” As if Ro had been the one presumed dead and gone. “It’s really, really you. I thought I’d never…” The tears brought on from laughter now fell in earnest. She wrung her long fingers together. They were cold, as always. Pale.

“I have so much to tell you,” she admitted. But the Christmas crowd and the smell of dumpster didn’t seem to be the place. “So much of it even I don’t know. But I just — I saw you and I ran.” There had been more delicate ways to act. Liv had always had a good head on her shoulders. Her heart often protested its plans, and won out.

[nadiacattaneo]

Vampire.

"Drink," was her replied, nudging the water closer with the tip of her boot. She had questions, and the woman wouldn't be able to answer them without at least something to drink, to sooth the throat. She sounded, and looked, like hell. But Nadia was a distrustful woman -- especially where the immortal was involved. "Then tell me what you're doing here."

[livpendragon]

If it was poisoned, Liv was going to find out. No hesitation kept her from reaching for the glass, downing its contents, sighing into the relief. It was no hot, soothing trickle of blood but it healed her nonetheless. Only once it was gone —a not insignificant amount of it lost down her chin, neck— did she find the strength to prop herself up on one elbow and afford even the slightest dignity to herself.

Again she opted for honesty, for better or worse. “I heard you speaking back there, on the docks.” She gestured ‘back there’ in a wildly inaccurate direction. “I recognized the accent, I thought. I’ve been… I had some enemies there. I had some friends, too. I guess I heard your voice and knew it was my chance to get back to them.” Both of them.

[nadiacattaneo]

Nadia didn't crouch, nor did she comfort, after all this person could be a ploy, an enemy. She looked like shit, but that could all be an act. She didn't rush her crew member to get water to ease the throat, merely having it placed by the woman's side once he returned. Some people would hate to live with such suspicions, it wouldn't even be in their nature. But for Nadia, for pirates, it ran in their bones. There was no warmth given here. "Where's home?"

[livpendragon]

It was the response she'd been expecting. Shrewd, cautious. Coming from a safe distance. What Liv needed were the magic words that would assuage those sensible doubts. "I think my home is the same as your home," Liv cautioned a guess. The pause that came after wasn't because Liv thought the pirate Captain would so soon reply with the location of her home, but because it hurt badly to speak.

A faraway look drifted across her face as quick as a storm cloud over the sea. "Obsidian City." And when she spoke the words, she felt all the memories of her home crackle across her skin. "St. Vladimir's, to be exact." It was a detail that wouldn't mean anything if Liv was wrong about the accent, and if she was right they just might send her overboard anyway for being a vampire, but she banked on the chance her honesty would save her now even if it hadn't in the past.

[nadiacattaneo]

It wasn't often they picked up a stray, but it had happened enough time in Nadia's sixty years at sea that it wasn't a shock, either. She didn't rush over when one of her crew came over and said they'd pulled someone over. She didn't panic, although she certainly was curious.

Finishing penning her letter, she placed her pen down and stood, strapping her sword to her side (people did ridiculous things, after all), and headed up to the top deck, where a woman lay, seemingly unconscious. "Get a blanket and some water," she said to one of her crew before looking down at their guest, nudging her lightly with the tip of her boot. "Wakey wakey."

[livpendragon]

In her daze, hearing once more that accent she'd heard back on the docks, Liv's mind conjured images of Ro. Hazily she dreamt it was her who nudged Liv back to consciousness. Wakey wakey. Liv's body gave a twitch, her mouth a grunt, and slowly she reached up to wrap her hands around her throat, which burned from saltwater and the thirst for blood. Her eyes flew open, every sense coming back to her at once, and fixed upon her savior — or captor, depending on how time told the story as it stretched out and away from the hopeful beginnings.

Liv's voice was a hoarse croak so different to the quiet, smooth quality of river-washed stone it usually held. "Passage," she begged the formidable pirate captain. She coughed again, and it felt like shards of glass scraped up the sides of her lungs. How soon after healing she had forgotten the pain it took to die and keep living.

"I bring no harm," she said, even if she was only somewhat sure of it. She had a capacity for causing harm, but no will or intention to exercise it. "I'm looking," —another coughing fit— "for home."

[livpendragon]

November 2023 In a port far, far away @nadiacattaneo

The island accent was as subtle as it was varied, but Liv would have recognized it anywhere. She had only been listening for it on every breath, in every town and inn and port, for months now. Wishing, hoping, dreaming the wind would carry it to her and she could find her way back to where it came from. Where she came from. And there it was.

But it was sailing away.

It was unlike her not to think before leaping, but leap she did and think she didn't. Straight into the sea on a foreign shore where the moon was hung high in the pitch black sky and the water would have chilled her to the bone if she hadn't been born dead.

The ship was already nearing a league out at sea with the help of the same wind and waves that worked against Liv. She had never been an exceptional swimmer, even in her fittest form which she remained far from even now, but she had to try. It wasn't like she'd die if she drowned. She'd lived through worse.

That was exactly what she was telling herself when the water pulled her under and held her there for as long as it took to subdue a vampire. When she came to, she was wrapped in netting and expelling half of the ocean from her lungs on deck, with all the dignity of a fish. "Obsidian City," she managed to cough out, before her head lulled back and her eyes rolled to the heavens. She prayed the right ears had heard her. Apparently, she'd had as many enemies on the island as she'd had friends. That, she'd found out the hard way.

[livpendragon]

long time no see. say hello to upper st. vlad's least favorite dead girl. once upon a time she was next in line to take on the Pendragon political throne, but they sort of hated her generally good nature and equitable politics so they had her burned to death! #succession. that's okay, because reading interview with the vampire fundamentally changed me as a person, so taking a page from Lestat's book she gets to play the immortal trump card. they probably should have beheaded her if they hated her ideas so much, huh? thankfully they just threw her charred remains on the first pirate ship off the island and lo and behold there were rats enough to keep her alive! if but barely. it might've taken a few years to regain her form and wits and find her way back, but that's like 3 weeks in vampire years really, and who's counting anyway? (Ro, probably. Sorry girl). you just can't keep a good girl down.

possible connections????

any pirates willing to ferry a long lost vampire back from hell to the island?

well-to-do vamps that might've rubbed elbows with the Pendragon political machine in the past

any friend of Ro's is a friend in Liv's mind <3 she loves you even if she doesn't know you yet. not you, alexander. she's watching you.