A natural nosey parker, Kitty simply had to check out whatever her the bar staff had been babbling about at the Danu - a body, police tape. Taking a convenient lunch break, she’d tottered her way down to the crime scene on too-tall heels, eager to take a look. Would she know them? Were they part of her faction?
An investigator of sorts caught her sniffing around and she did her best to look mildly shocked, batting her lashes and motioning towards what little of the body could be seen by the general public. “He looks like a regular,” Which was true, in the sense that every person who visited twice a week could be seen as a regular. “There’s a rather large bar tab with his name on it, if he’s who I think he is,” Kitty explained.
He didn’t fall for the ‘innocent victim’ card, not with those heels. However his ears perked up at her words and he turned to face her, taking out a pen and pad. “Would you happen to have something that’s more helpful than ‘John Doe,’ Miss...?” He put pen to paper and made eye contact with her, something that wasn’t a normal feat. “Any hint helps, it saves us a lot of time. There was no identification on him. So its either a robbery, or the perp wanted us to have difficulty placing him. Hopefully dental scans will do the trick.”
Originally, he had thought that maybe this encounter would be fun. It had only been five minutes and he could see how very wrong he had been about that. This man was beautiful, there was absolutely no doubting that - but wound entirely too tight. Instead, Tai simply stared at him for a moment, as if everything he’d just said was in an entirely different language before rolling his eyes.
“You know what, nevermind. It drains my entire being to have to try and tolerate this, Debbie Downer. You’re cute, but not that cute.” He offers, reaching down and patting the top of his head as if to say good dog, before he’s turning to make what he hopes is a smooth exit. Tai doesn’t have near enough time to waste on what he’s already labeled as a lost cause.
He made a face. No one had called him ‘cute’ before, but ‘Debbie Downer’ was a rather common one. It was hard not to be depressed when your life revolved around death, but he didn’t owe this guy any apologies today. “I coulda used your strength--and height--by the way!” he called after the other, then waved his hand as he figured the other was also a lost cause. Seems they had that in common.
“Oh, sweet summer child…” He mused, catching on to the fact that Maddox seemed dreadfully unaware of his intentions in that simple suggestion. It was always the pretty ones, honestly. There was a moment where hand was lifted, fingers touching the stubble that rested under chin as he contemplated the whole thing, dramatic to his very core, before shaking head.
“Did you really just tell me I’m not a suspect, but still ask where I was?” He questioned, laughing a bit at how it sounded quite obvious, but perhaps he was a bit behind the times when it came to police work. “But, to answer your question, I was at home. Sadly, very alone, unless were counting the bottle of wine that was keeping me company.”
“Oh my God,” he stated, looking around as if he were being Punk’d. “I asked if you’re a witness. But if you want to be a suspect I can get someone to put you in shackles. Something tells me you’d like that.” Finally, he was catching on. “Okay, well... thank you for your time Mr. Doe.” Again, he didn’t trust the man’s name so he opted to use an alias.
“Would you like to assist me in putting the body onto a gurney? Would you like to ride shotgun on the way to the morgue? Would you like to assist the autopsy?” These were all rhetorical and he turned away from the man to inspect the body a little longer.
“That’s probably because it is.” She’d barely remembered that the computer was inside, but thankfully it was her personal - meaning it didn’t contain anything that needed to be protected. Regardless, the banshee seemed to be doing her a favor, a rarity considering her generally icy demeanor. Esme Knox didn’t exactly invite people in, but with good reason. She was far too damaged for most, entirely broken in ways that people just didn’t understand. In fact, they were afraid of the monster she’d made of herself, and she didn’t blame them.
He, however, didn’t seem to share any of that fear. Instead, she reached out to let cold fingers wrap around the laptop he was carrying, effectively taking it back into her possession for a moment. Head shook, her own off brand way of being gracious, before words managed to flow behind the gesture.
“Thank you, I would have been pissed when I got home and realized I’d left it.”
“Yeah, it... it’s nicer than mine,” he exhaled, smiling. He had a good job in town and yet he hadn’t tried for a good laptop? Maybe he should get his priorities straight. But in order to save up the money he might have to give up some coffee, and he wasn’t ready to do that just yet. “I’m actually headed in this direction. Should I give you a head start, or walk you to the corner?”
Hal raised an eyebrow, “Sorry. Personal space, yeah?” He offered understandingly, hands coming up as he stepped back from the other. He didn’t have to look at the body again before nodding- yes, he did know the guy- if only in passing- he recognized the man’s cologne. “Came into the flower shop, two days ago? I think. Little heavy-handed with the cologne, not easy to forget, unfortunately.” He scrunched his nose.
“I was walking home when I smelled him. Figured he passed out somewhere- didn’t get the smell of death right away.” Hal said softly, reaching down to grab for his wallet, slipping out his ID and offering it over to Maddox, “He’d been drinking when he came in the other day- not too much, but it was on his breath. Bought roses- for himself. Think he was celebrating something but he didn’t say what.”
“You work in a flower shop?” he asked disbelievingly, but judgment wasn’t the main article lacing his voice. It could’ve been mistaken for confusion, but Maddox had been repressed for so long, told what was masculine and feminine for his whole life. The church had very specific standards, like women wearing skirts and men wearing pants, it was no wonder he had a hard time wrapping his head around socially ambiguous mores.
“And you don’t know anything else about him?” he asked, taking the identification and glancing at it lazily. “No conversations with the deceased? His name was Timothy Barrett.” It was of course possible his drunkenly habits could be correlated to his death, but Maddox didn’t like to speculate. He had to get the cold hard facts before stating anything or signing anything over. “What a way to find a body,” he sighed, believing Mr. Hal’s story. He had no reason to distrust the man (werewolf?) so he returned the ID.
“No, didn’t know him. It’s sad, though.” Dorian hated when bad things happened near the harbor, it was the few places they always felt safe. Being the type of person they were, seeing bad things in general saddened them. “What happened, Maddox?”
“We don’t know yet,” he sighed, ignoring the question about identification because he knew Dorian, and they were a sweet soul. There was no way they could be caught up in this sort of foul play. “No wounds, so drowning is a possibility. The thing with drowning though is there can still be violence, it just doesn’t show as easily. I’ll need to check the body for bruising or inflammation when I get to the lab. Sorry to ruin your morning, Dor. Were you heading into work?”
“I used to pray. Pray that I wouldn’t get exorcised, pray that the dreams would stop, pray that I would wake up one day and be ordinary and boring. But my beliefs have changed since then. I am now a man of science. After going to medical school, its hard to believe anything happens after lights out, which maybe makes it worse. I can’t answer your question. Sometimes I watch TV? I can’t sleep it off, obviously, so I keep my mind occupied with work. For some reason, tangible death is easier than the unknown, a stranger in my head screaming out for help. Sorry if this was insufficient.”
“A crime scene?” He exclaimed, the words sounding entirely too surprised. It was an act after all, dramatics for the sake of dramatics and nothing more. Perhaps the hybrid was bored, and maybe he just felt like tapping into his asshole tendencies, whatever it was, it seemed to work for him. The trouble was keeping that grin at bay, the expression already flirting with the corner of his mouth for a moment before chasing it away.
“You want to see my ID…is this how you find people to take home…just steal their addresses from their identification?” He questioned, that grin finally cracking through the serious expression he had been trying to maintain. Laughter left the edges of his lips, curls falling into face for just a moment, before consulting his pocket. The wallet was pulled, and ID handed over, despite the fact it was very clearly a fake.
“Is this the part where I have to say I didn’t do it..”
Maddox furrowed his brow. “I assure you I do not look at the addresses on identifiers,” he replied, sounding bored and completely unaware of what the other was getting at. “Thank you,” he said, handing the identification back (he could tell it was tampered with and didn’t trust the name to be real, so he didn’t address the other by name). “No, you’re not a suspect. But did you know the victim? Were you near here around the hours of 1AM to 7?” He tapped his temple, wishing that he could see more than just deaths, but perpetrators as well. That would make it easier, to have visions, to find the suspect. Even if there was no evidence, he could use the knowledge to find evidence towards the person who did each atrocity. But no, instead he saw deaths, near or far, and the life drain out of people’s eyes. That was fun.
In their tags of one of my edit, @echomoon pointed out that Q smiles when he’s sad and I had to verified. How can he do a sad smile like that and be so handsome ._. Anyway thanks for pointing that out I adore that little bit of acting from Jason
Sometimes, it would hit her like a ton of bricks. The weight was so unbareably heavy on her chest that it made it hard to breathe, even though she didn’t exactly need the air in her lungs. It scattered every thought, and scrambled everything into chaos. It was sort of ironic, wasn’t it? The idea of a vampire with panic attacks, some supernatural warrior with a hair pin trigger when it came to certain things.
Regardless of what exactly it was, it didn’t change the fact that she could call it, could feel it creeping up in her bones, with every intent on trying to drown her. This is exactly why the scraping of the legs of her stool could be heard, forcing the wood against the floor entirely too hard, before feet hit it. There wasn’t time to stop for a stretch, and she almost stumbled with the way that she was headed toward the door.
It wasn’t until the safety of the night air put a brand new chill on her skin that she could stop, back finding the brick wall of the side of the building. A deep breath sucked in, out of habit, as unruly fingers brushed back through her hair, attempting to hold it away from her face.
She was so lost in this that she didn’t even notice someone approaching her, which was a particularly reckless midjudgement, but as she began to come out of it, eyes lifted and centered on them, trying to put a name to a face.
He didn’t like to go home. He didn’t like to sleep in his bed. He drank coffee every hour of the day, and none of that decaf nonsense. Sure he needed a lot of sugar to make it bearable, which sometimes caused him to crash and need sleep, but that was not tonight as he sat in and soon left the cafe.
“Ma’am,” he approached cautiously. He recognized the anxiety-ridden expression. He had experienced a lot of that in school before he honed his abilities and learned to be okay with death. That was an exaggeration, death was still one of the worst things that could happen to somebody (albeit peaceful deaths existed, thank God), and he wasn’t sure he would ever get “used to” such a horrific thing. If it wasn’t for his work in the morgue, he would be crawled under a rock in horror at all the nightmares he had. Which was still pretty close to the truth, even with his medical schooling.
Being a, now, man of science when he was raised devout was confusing at times, but he knew what he believed in, what kind of afterlife, if any, there would be if he or his loved ones died. Even a stranger on the street. Therefore, sometimes he could trick his brain into thinking death wasn’t the worst thing possible. If someone didn’t suffer, they were lucky. But this woman was suffering for whatever reason, and he felt guilty even though he was trying to help. “You left your laptop at the cafe and... it looks expensive, is all.”
“This is a crime scene, I’ll have to ask you to step back,” he said without looking up. There was a death in town and as the forensic pathologist (or mortician), it was his job to survey the body and its surroundings. He held a pen and paper in both hands as he took notes. A police officer came up to Maddox and commented on what he smelled. Officer Johnson was a vampire with keen senses, so sometimes he assisted the young coroner if there were traces of blood or other toxic residues, be it drugs or poison.
He finally turned towards the onlooker. “I need to see some identification, or... did you know the guy?” he asked, trying but failing to be gentle, looking up to someone who was breathing down his neck. However that may have been an overstatement because of how sensitive Maddox was to intimacy and personal space.
*waves* hi everyone! I’m Chloe. I will slowly be getting to my bios but here is my first word-vomity one (Maddox was in a short-lived roleplay where the bios were long af. I tried to lessen it but idk)
Here comes MADDOX BLACKTHORN. Someone keeps telling me they look just like JASON RALPH. HE is a 28 year old BANSHEE. I also heard that while HE can be INDEPENDENT and HUMBLE but also sometimes get a little OBTUSE and QUIET. They have aligned themselves with NO ONE for now, but who knows what might change their mind. HE HAS NOT run the gauntlet.
PAST:
He was bullied in school for being adopted. He was taunted for not having a “real” family, but Maddox always played it off like it didn’t matter. He loved his adoptive parents. They were mom and dad, and in primary school he gladly went to church with Mr and Mrs Blackthorn, but as they became more zealous he pulled away. They noticed him less, staying out longer with their peers, being missionaries in their communities and attending mass.
As puberty began, Maddox’s nightmares got worse, vivid, and his sleepwalking occurred more often, cutting up his feet. He barely had peach fuzz on his lip when his parents started whispering about exorcisms, an archaic, extinct practice. The screaming got more violent, even shattering glass and somehow shaking the house at night. This wasn’t mere adolescence. Thankfully Mr and Mrs Blackthorn didn’t follow through with the empty threats, but they shipped their only son off to a boarding school; he was someone else’s problem now, and they could focus their time on God’s will.
It was here, with a mansion full of strangers, that Maddox began remembering his nightmares the day after, and therefore became afraid to sleep. He didn’t take good care of his body, he shook in class and his roommates complained about his late-night pacing. He suffered years of being afraid to sleep at night, and instead of going home for the summer after graduation, he traveled and studied. He’d always been in-cognizant to the political economy and supernatural beings, only being fed the prejudiced rubbish his pious parents and all-boy’s school cared to share with him. From his findings, Maddox learned what he might’ve been, a banshee. After months of seeking help and growing estranged from the only people he’d had in his life, he met a supernatural couple who took him under their wing. ‘Go to medical school,’ they offered. ‘Learn anatomy, so you can put words to your visions. You won’t be able to stop the death from happening, but being able to explain it may help, to get it out in some form, be it in art or writing or verbally or some other way may help.’ He’d never thought of it that way, but he soon loved these two, and took their words like gospel. Everything they said seemed to be just right, and made perfect sense.
He never fully understood how to control his powers, if they could even be considered that. After obtaining his medical degree he moved to Baeshra to be with people of ‘his own kind’ and hopefully learn more about himself and his past. Maybe in due time he wouldn’t be terrified of sleeping.
CURRENT:
For as long as he can remember, Maddox Blackthorn hasn’t been a stranger to nightmares. He even keeps a fresh glass of water next to his bed, in the almost regular event that he wakes up parched or sweating or gasping in fright. Again, it’s nothing new.
The nightmares keep him up at night, pouring coffee day in and day out, an endless cycle of jitters. A walking zombie, the thought keeps popping up in his head. Not 28 Days Later, but Night of the Living Dead. He knows he’s not violent, he drowns in blood and gory images at night. He has the stomach for it of course, working in the morgue and helping the Police Department on some grisly cases. But Maddox Blackthorn would much rather be alone, for everyone’s sake.
Strangers falling off cliffs, car crashes that he feels in his chest, gunshot wounds that leave him slick with sweat upon waking up before the birds could even begin to sing. This is why he paced at night, why his bed was made more often than used, why he drank hundreds of dollars worth of coffee. And again, it’s getting worse. He has to make some change, find some people to help him, to get better. People like him, hopefully. And with the gauntlet looming over his head, he practices fighting, afraid his clock will run out before he has the chance to get any answers to his millions of questions.
TL;DR (I get it)
Maddox was adopted by religious parents who threatened to exorcise him when his banshee abilities began. He was eventually shipped off to an all-boys school where the nightmares only got worse and he became afraid to fall asleep. After graduation, with poor health thanks to not sleeping or eating well, he met a supernatural couple who spoke of Baeshra and told him to get a medical degree, to de-stigmatize the horrific images he saw every night. He moved to Baeshra afterwards and became a forensic pathologist. He is still pretty new and doesn’t know many people, hence being neutral.
