❝ i love this world, even in its hard places. a bird too must love this world, even in its hard places. so, even if the effort might come to nothing, you need to do something. ❞
I. INTRODUCTION.
name ― utp.
age ― utp.
species ― werewolf.
gender & pronouns ― utp.
face claim ― utp.
status ― open.
II. DIGGING DEEPER.
growing up among the werewolves, you always felt more beast than human. your home was the forest and the wind and the dark that settled between the pines at night. the pack was the only family you ever knew, and for a long time, that felt like all you needed. you stayed in your wolf form more often than not, half-feral and always hungry for something beyond your reach. you didn't have the words for what it was exactly. you just knew it was there, just past the trees, just out of sight. you often wondered if you had parents once. real ones. sometimes, you dreamt about them in your sleep. you saw the ghost of your mother's hands, heard the echo of your father's laugh. but no matter how you tried to remember them, their faces and names were blank spaces in your memory, white as the moon you were bound to.
the pack ran you hard, and the years blurred into each other until you couldn't keep them straight anymore. you followed where they led, hunted what they hunted, and answered to the pull of the moon. slowly, the human parts of you went quiet, then quieter, then nearly silent. you stopped dreaming about your parents completely. you stopped wondering about what was beyond the trees. the hunger was the loudest thing in you, and it was simple, and it was easier to focus on that than everything else. so you ate. you ran. you forgot. you told yourself you were wild and ferocious and free, and what could be better than that?
and then someone called your name. you didn't even remember what it was at that point, but something in you rose at the sound of it, warm and sudden, like a long-forgotten instinct waking. whispered by a face you didn't recognize or almost didn't, someone from before the pack. and they said your name like they knew you, like you were still someone who could be known that way. you were still in your wolf form — you hardly ever left it anymore — but somehow, they recognized you anyway, from your eyes, your movements, something that hadn't gone entirely animal no matter how hard you'd tried. you looked up at them, for just a moment. and then you ran. ran like a startled animal, back into the dark between the trees. but the name followed you there, and something small and stubborn stirred in the place where the quiet had been, and it wouldn't go back to sleep no matter how hard you ran.
it took time. more time than you expected, more than felt fair. the name had cracked something open in you, and once cracked, it kept widening, the human parts of you pressing through the gap. like your old name was a tether that pulled you back to your core. you started shifting back without meaning to, waking up in your human form, disoriented and cold, the world suddenly too loud and too bright and too big for your little human body. you'd forgotten how much it hurt to have hands. how strange it felt to stand upright. how quiet the world sounded without being able to hear your own heartbeat. the pack noticed. nothing ever gets past wolves. you left before they could decide what to do about it, slipping away in the dark. you didn't look back. you'd learned that much, at least, from the years of running.
it's strange, learning to be mostly human again, seeing the world through brand new eyes. everything is softer than you remembered. the colors. the light. the way the sun feels on your skin. you'd forgotten what it felt like to want small things like a warm meal and a roof over your head and the sound of someone saying your name. you think you're falling in love with it, with being human, with being alive in this beautifully weak body. a good song coming through a radio. the smell of coffee. the comfort of a blanket pulled close, like a wolf-mother cocooning her pup. the way humans laugh at things that aren't funny, just because it feels good to laugh. it's been six years now, and you're still learning new things, still waking up some mornings expecting fur and finding only skin. the wolf is still in there. there is something in you that will always be half-wild, and you've made your peace with that. but you're choosing this, choosing humanity, choosing the world. even if it means you might die protecting it.
III. CONNECTIONS.
the blade ― you remember it. out of everything from those years, blurred and formless and barely yours, you remember this. you remember because they were the first but not the last. you were feral and running and something got in the way and you bit them before you understood what you were doing. you didn't stay to see what happened after. you ran, just like you always ran, back into the dark between the trees. you recognized them the moment you saw them. they don't know it was you who ruined their life, who changed the course of it forever. you could keep it that way. you've been thinking about it every day since you got here, trying to figure out what the right thing is. deep down, you think you already know what that is.
the wound ― you didn't expect to like them at first. they're serious, careful, and you are anything but. you are still learning how humans are supposed to dress, still stopping dead in the middle of conversations because a sweet smell came through an open window. a half-tamed hound. you thought they'd find you exhausting, like most people did. but they didn't. they just...stayed. asked you questions about what you were relearning, listened to the answers without making you feel foolish for not knowing them already. you find them quietly steady and grounding, something to focus on when the wolf in you gets loud. they were the one who brought you into this fight in the first place. you weren't really looking for a friend, but somehow, you found one anyway. you're choosing to count that as one of the things about being human that makes it worth it.
the hollow ― they were important to you once. you knew that the moment you saw them. even half-feral, even barely holding onto language, something in you recognized them at the edge of the trees. they looked at your wolf body like they knew exactly who was underneath it. they whispered your name with such gentleness, such care. and you ran away. that was all you knew how to do, all you could do. you didn't know what happened to them after. you looked for them for years, returning to the same place, following the same trail without ever finding them. you didn't know they were already gone. you didn't know until you walked into the same room and found them still here, fighting the same fight as you. you're still not entirely sure how you know them. you don't know if even they remember at this point. but you do know you owe them your life for helping you reach your humanity again. that's enough to start with.
the altar ― from the moment you met them, you didn't like them. there's something in them that the wolf recognizes and wants nothing to do with. you can't explain it as anything other than instinct, a voice from within that says they can't be trusted, that they're lying about nearly everything. they're too old and too polished. too careful about the words they choose. you've spent six years trying to learn which instincts to trust now that you're choosing to be human. the human parts of you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, to be fair, to be reasonable, to be the kind of person who doesn't decide things on instinct alone. but the wolf doesn't care about fair. the wolf says run. you're trying, trying to be more than the wolf. it's a work in progress.
❝ truly, i try to be good, but sometimes, a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. it's impossible not to remember wild and want it back. ❞
I. INTRODUCTION.
name ― utp.
age ― utp.
species ― banshee.
gender & pronouns ― utp.
face claim ― utp (must be black).
status ― open.
II. DIGGING DEEPER.
you were never going to be the chosen one. your family had been waiting for a slayer for generations, and you were not it. what you were was the one who took every dare without hesitation, who pushed every joke past the point of comfort, who made people laugh and then immediately made them worried. the class clown. the slacker who couldn't seem to take anything seriously, no matter how hard your family pushed. it wasn't because you didn't care — you did, somewhere underneath, you cared so much — but because moving fast enough meant you didn't have to think about what was waiting at home. the expectations. the preparation. the calling that felt like a weight on your back. it was easier to be the one everyone was watching for the wrong reasons than the one everyone expected to shoulder the world. easier to pretend that you were never going to grow up than think about what was waiting for you once you did. they trained you anyway, tried to prepare you for the life they thought you'd inherit. you could tell they were disappointed in you. what they never understood, and what you never told them, was that the jokes were the point. if you could make someone laugh, they had to look at you. if you were funny enough, loud enough, reckless enough, someone might stay a little longer. you did a lot of things for a lot of people just to keep them looking. it never quite worked the way you wanted. you kept trying anyway.
and then the calling found your cousin instead, and you felt something you hadn't expected: relief. pure, unadulterated relief. you weren't going to have to carry it. you weren't going to have to be what your family had been building toward. you could keep moving, keep joking, keep being the one nobody was counting on for anything important. for about three weeks, life felt lighter than it ever had. then you wailed for the first time. you didn't know what it was. you didn't have a name for it, didn't have anything except the sound coming out of you and your family's wide, stricken faces. you felt every single one of them like something tearing open in your chest, a door you hadn't known existed swinging wide. your family stood there and watched it happen, and nobody said anything for a very long time. somehow, some way, despite all the nights you wished not to be the one, you'd inherited something worse. a banshee, a harbinger of death. figures.
halloween, 1990 was when you truly understood what you were. six people died that night and you felt every single one of them, one after another, arriving before you had time to brace. you didn't know their names then. you learned them later. you didn't make a single joke for two weeks after that. that was how your family knew it was bad. they'd seen you crack wise at a funeral, had watched you deflect every serious conversation with a punchline. two weeks of silence was the most frightened they'd ever been of you. you didn't know how to explain that you'd felt six people leave the world in one night and the humor just — wasn't there anymore. it came back eventually. it always comes back. but it came back different, quieter underneath, with something behind it that hadn't been there before.
you grew up, a little. you're still you, still the one most likely to make a joke at the worst possible moment, still the one who takes a dare before thinking it through. but halloween changed something in you. it's harder to be reckless when you can feel the weight of what recklessness costs, harder to pretend nothing matters when you've spent a night feeling six people learn that everything does. your banshee abilities only grew stronger after halloween. the visions kept coming, the wail arriving without warning, the deaths landing in you before they landed in the world. you got better at managing it. you learned that the humor helps, not because it makes any of it smaller, but because it makes it bearable enough to keep going.
and now the signs are back. you've known since the wail that marked the sixth slayer's return from the void, arriving in the middle of a shift at work and scaring the hell out of three customers and one very confused coworker. for once predicting life instead of death. the group has assembled, and you're with them, which is not where you expected to be, but here you are anyway, carrying something nobody asked you to carry, making jokes that land a little differently than they used to. you know things the others don't. you can feel the gate, track the hunger's movements, hear what's coming before it arrives. it's not nothing. you've decided to stop pretending it is. you've spent years feeling death before it arrives, and if there's one thing that's taught you, it's that you might as well laugh. death's coming for everyone eventually. you'd rather meet it with a wild grin than a hopeless prayer.
III. CONNECTIONS.
the tome ― you grew up hearing the stories and fearing how true they were. they grew up hearing the same stories and not believing a word of them. your cousin was always the serious one, the smart one, the one who was going places far and fast. you used to drive them crazy on purpose just to see if you could crack their composure. sometimes you could. you counted those as victories. you loved them, but you also spent most of your childhood feeling like the wrong answer to a question your family kept asking. when the calling chose them instead, you felt relieved, yes, but also something smaller and harder to admit. like you'd been passed over. like even the universe had looked between the two of you and made its choice. meant to be the heir and then wound up the spare. you've never said that out loud. you never will. but you show up for them anyway, because that's what you do, and because underneath all the complicated feelings there's still the simple one: they're your family, and you'd do anything for them. you're glad it was them and not you, mostly, on the days when you can make yourself believe it.
the veil ― you met them and thought: oh, there's another one. something in the way they carried themselves, like someone balancing something breakable on their head and hoping nobody noticed. you'd been doing it your whole life, just with more noise. you became fast, uncomplicated friends: just two people who showed up to the supernatural equivalent of a disaster zone carrying secrets they'd rather not have, muddling through on nerve and denial. you knew that they knew what it was like, to crave normalcy but receive anything but. you've never had to explain it to them, which is the whole point. you'd die before you admitted how much it helps, having someone around who gets it without you having to say it. so instead you make them laugh. it's basically the same thing. sometimes you think you'd set yourself on fire just to hear that laugh, like bells chiming in the rain. there's no sweeter sound in the world than that.
the compass ― it was never supposed to be anything. you didn't do serious, but somehow, you spent most of junior year finding excuses to be in the same room. you kept it from your cousin, which should've been the first sign that it was more than nothing. you don't keep nothing a secret. you kept this one because of the rivalry, you told yourself. because it was easier than explaining. because some things are simpler when nobody's watching. it could've been something. you know that. you knew it then, on the nights when the jokes ran out and you were just two people sitting in the dark, and they looked at you like they were trying to figure out what was underneath. you never let them find out. that's the honest version. you could've let them in and you didn't, because you weren't ready to be seen. not yet. you can tell they've moved on, found what they were looking for in someone else. that's something you'll have to live with, in the end.
the hollow ― you knew them. maybe not well but still, you remember that you used to sit behind them in chemistry. you made them laugh once, maybe twice. you don't remember what you said. you never do. that's the thing about being the funny one you're always performing for the room, never quite tracking which faces stick. and then the vision came. their face, specific and clear. you shrugged it off, the way you always did. you told yourself it was a bad dream. three days later, they were gone. you think about that sometimes. whether it would have mattered if you'd said something. whether there was anything to say. but they were the first, and you remember their face better than almost anyone else's, and now they're here — still here, somehow — and you don't know what to do with that except show up and try not to make it weird. you're not sure you're succeeding. what's a person supposed to do when they're face-to-face with their biggest regret?
❝ i was not a lovable child, and i'd grown into a deeply unlovable adult. draw a picture of my soul, and it'd be a scribble with fangs. ❞
I. INTRODUCTION.
name ― utp.
age ― 131-138 (physically 25-32).
species ― vampire / slayer.
gender & pronouns ― utp.
face claim ― utp (must be poc).
status ― open.
II. DIGGING DEEPER.
most children grow up warm and loved, safe in the knowledge their parents would always look out for them. you were never one of those children. you came from a family well-practiced in cruelty. your father ruled the house like a tyrant, and your mother was no gentler for standing beside him. childhood was little more than something to be endured. you learned early that the monsters worth fearing didn't have claws or fangs or eyes that catch the light wrong. they had your last name, your hollow grin, your sharp tongue. you see, your family never hunted to protect anyone. they hunted for power, for sport, for trophies mounted on walls and money passed under tables from people too desperate to ask where it came from. so when the calling found you, it made a terrible, twisted sort of sense. of course the universe handed a weapon to someone already raised to be one.
when your father learned what you were, he didn't blink. didn't ask if you were afraid, or overwhelmed, or barely eighteen. he asked what you could lift, what you could break, how fast you could learn to kill something that screamed like a person. you already knew the answer. you'd been learning it your whole life. you fought it — fought him — for a while. some stubborn buried thing your father could never train out of you wanted to be better, wanted to be like the rest of your circle. you didn't know what goodness looked like, not really. no one had shown you. but even then, you knew what your family called strength was just another word for brutality. at first, you tried to keep those parts of yourself hidden from your newfound friends, terrified they'd shun you if they knew who you really were. but in the end, you told them. that was your first mistake, or maybe your only real act of courage. you've never been able to decide which. you told your circle who your father was, what your family had done, what they'd do again if they learned how much you'd come to care. you thought, maybe together, you could find a way out.
but your father got there first. he came to you alone and laid it out plainly: betray them or he'd finish what your family had always been good at. he named names — your circle, their families, their friends, people who had nothing to do with any of it, people you'd never even mentioned but he knew anyway, because he always knew. he didn't need to touch a single one of them himself. he had enough money and worse people than you working for him. you thought about warning them anyway, about grabbing whoever you cared about most and running until the world got too small for him to reach. then he showed you why you shouldn't try. someone close to you went missing and never came back. there was no way out that left anyone breathing. ground down by a lifetime of him being right about what you'd do when it came down to it, you did what he asked. you told yourself it was the smaller evil. you have never fully believed that, not once, not even now.
your father had a quiet stake in the mine, where another gate to maggot creek was hidden beneath the ground. under his instructions, you led them there. it collapsed with all of them inside. it should have killed you too — you'd wanted it to, more than anything — but he'd been force-feeding you vampire blood for months, making sure his weapon couldn't break even when it was supposed to. you came up out of that wreckage alone and hungry, understanding you'd chosen the betrayal even if he built the trap. you killed him that night with everything you had left, overpowering him with your twofold strength. it didn't fix anything. it only left you alone with what you'd become and no one left to blame but yourself. so you ran. from yourself, from what you'd done, from what you'd given up. you fed wrong for years, fed cruel, fed like something that had given up on deserving better. you were glad you could no longer see yourself in a mirror. you already knew what you'd find there, your father's eyes staring back at you, finally everything he'd always wanted you to be.
but the tether doesn't let go that easily, even broken, even wrong. it pulled you back toward magnolia creek the way it pulls at everything with slayer blood still singing underneath the surface, and this time you didn't fight it. when the new circle found you, you could've said no. you almost did. but they were fighting the same hunger that took your circle, the same gate your father used to build his trap and your hands to spring it. you saw your old friends reflected in their eyes, and that was enough. they don't know the truth. you haven't told them. you're not sure you ever will, not sure they wouldn't look at you with the same horror your friends did in the end. in them, you've found something worth protecting once more, and that same stubborn buried thing, still alive somehow under all that hunger, refuses to let you walk away. not this time. you're here. you're on the right side of the gate. you just hope it stays that way when they find out what you did.
III. CONNECTIONS.
the wound ― they found you in a bad state. that's the charitable version. the honest version is that you were barely holding yourself together, feeding wrong, feeding cruel, closer to the thing your father made you than you'd ever been. they didn't flinch. they only wanted to help. it had been a long time since you'd seen that sort of quiet mercy. they were the one who pulled you back from your near-feral state, saved you from losing yourself to the hunger entirely. they've been coaching you since, showing you how to feed without causing damage, how to exist in this body without letting it ruin you. you're not sure you deserve it. you're not sure they'd give it if they knew the full truth. but you've seen the way they look at you sometimes, almost like a puzzle to be solved. the timeline fits, and you know it fits, and you don't know how much they've added up yet. it makes the help harder to take, being guided toward something better by someone who might already know what you did. and worse, you don't think they judge you for it. you almost wish they would.
the dark ― you know that they remember you. you know that they suspect you. there's something in the way they look at you that has nothing to do with the group and everything to do with what you're not saying. you don't know how much they've pieced together, whether they're still circling the truth or already certain and simply waiting. what you know is that they loved the slayer, and you were the reason the slayer didn't come back. you carry that. you have carried it since you crawled out of the wreckage, and some days, it is the only thing that feels real. if your guilt had a face, it would be theirs. you know that, someday, you'll have to answer for what you've done. you think about leaving. you think about it more than you'd like to admit. but you can't let yourself, not this time. sooner or later, you're going to have to face the truth. you just hope that when you do, everyone will still be able to look at you afterwards.
the blade ― two hunters turned to beasts, transmogrified to something entirely unrecognizable. in some twisted way, the bite freed you both from the shackles around your wrists, placed there by the ones who were meant to love you most. you recognize it in them, the undoable damage of someone who was built into a weapon and then discarded when they became inconvenient. the way the knife never unlearns how to cut. the difference is that they wear it openly, the rage right there on the surface, daring anyone to say something about it. yours is buried under everything else, under the guilt and the hunger and shame. you haven't told them what you did. you don't know if you'll ever find that sort of courage again, but there's something between you that doesn't require explanation, something that just sees and understands. how could you ever ask for anything more?
the chain ― you knew it the moment you met them. you saw it in their flinty eyes, their stubborn mouth, so much like your own. family. it's been a long time since you've had to face that, some distant uncomfortable reflection of yourself. even after a hundred years, the rot still touches them, just in another way. they grew up so unlike how you did ― fortunes rotted, lineages dwindled to nothing. to them, family means a grief-stricken mother, a sibling they couldn't save, and a different sort of guilt. the knowledge that they'd tried, really tried, but trying wasn't enough. you know that they don't really want you around, that they would trade your life for their sibling's in an instant. but in some awful way, you're all each other has left. how long will either of you be able to fight that? maybe, just maybe, is there something good to be found amidst all the misery your bloodline has brought? or will they just be another person you disappoint in the end?
❝ surely they'll grow out of it, they think. i grew into it. it grew into me. it and i blurred at the edges, became one amorphous, seeping, crawling thing. ❞
I. INTRODUCTION.
name ― utp.
age ― utp.
species ― witch.
gender & pronouns ― utp.
face claim ― utp (must be poc).
status ― open.
II. DIGGING DEEPER.
you've always known what lives beneath this town. that's the difference between you and most people in magnolia creek. you grew up with it the way other children grow up with bedtime stories and dinner tables. your family has been here for generations, a coven on the fringes of town, close enough to feel the hunger but far enough to exist without being consumed. death was never frightening to you. you never understood why it was supposed to be.
even among your own, you were out of place. weird. off-putting. freakish. but there was someone in the coven who didn't need you to be anything other than what you were, and that was rare enough that you noticed it. they had been practicing longer than anyone, knew things about the dead that the rest of the coven couldn't fathom, and they chose to teach you. you didn't realize until they were gone how much you'd let them in.
they died. magnolia creek does that to people. you knew that. it didn't help. you stood in the silence afterward and felt something close that you hadn't known was open. you didn't cry. you didn't know how to grieve something that large, so you shut down entirely. became completely numb to the world around you. the isolation after was different from the isolation before. before, you'd been alone because you didn't fit. after, you were alone because you'd decided. you stopped letting people close enough to matter. you still haven't started again.
the necromancy only improved after they died. you grew obsessed with the idea of death, determined to understand it fully and wholly. to understand where exactly your mentor went. you learned the difference between ordinary departure and what the hunger leaves behind — the mark it makes, what it takes, what remains. you got very good at reading what others couldn't see. the dead in magnolia creek are different from the dead elsewhere. you know that now. you know what to listen for. and you know, more than anyone else in this room, what a descent into maggot creek would mean. what it would find. what it would wake.
and then your cousin arrived, and for once, you were not alone anymore. you knew what they were before they did, the witch blood on their mother's side running through both of you, the visions they'd been concealing poorly enough that you noticed. you haven't said anything yet. you're still deciding whether to. no one is quite sure why you're here. you weren't called. you weren't marked. but you know what's down there, and when the descent comes, someone will need to navigate the dark. you just didn't expect to care what happens to any of them. and yet.
III. CONNECTIONS.
the talisman ― they annoyed you at first. they were too careful, too determined to be good in a way that made you tired just watching. you didn't understand why anyone would work that hard to outrun something that was already inside them. you still don't, entirely. but somewhere between the annoyance and the present, something shifted. they stayed longer than most people do, and you let them, which is not something you do. now you can't quite get them out of your head. you find yourself wanting to show them what you know — that the darkness they've been running from their whole life isn't something to be afraid of. that it can be inhabited. that it might even be a gift. you're still working out how to say it without it coming out wrong.
the veil ― your cousin arrived and you knew what they were before they'd finished unpacking. you've always been good at noticing what people were hiding. an occupational habit, maybe, or just a lifetime of existing outside the frame of normal human interaction. you haven't said anything. you're still deciding whether to, which is unusual for you. you've never been one to hold back to spare feelings. but there's something about them that makes you careful in a way you're not careful with most things. you see how desperate they are for normalcy. you've never understood that particular need — normalcy has never been something you wanted — but you respect it enough not to take it from them before they're ready. you let them move into your house and exist alongside you without making it strange, which is the most you know how to offer. it's more than you've offered anyone in a long time.
the ring ― you've never gotten along. that's just true, and neither of you has ever pretended otherwise. they came back from wherever they went looking like someone who'd worked very hard to become someone else. you looked at them and saw through it immediately, which is probably why they've never liked you. materialistic. vain. too invested in the performance of themselves to ever just be themselves. you find it tedious. you've never had the patience for people who care more about how they're perceived than who they actually are. the feeling, you're fairly certain, is mutual. you've never lost sleep over it. some people just don't fit. you stopped trying to figure out why a long time ago.
the blade ― you didn't go looking for them. you've always been content with being alone. solitude has never felt like a lack. but they ended up in your orbit anyway, without either of you making a decision you could point to afterward, and you let them stay, which is not something you tend to do. you find them restful in a way most people aren't. no expectations, no need to explain yourself, no one asking you to be warmer or kinder or more comprehensible than you are. they take you as you are. you do the same for them. it's a simple thing. you've never needed it to be more than that. which is probably why it is.
❝ but this dark is deep: now i warm you with my blood, listen to this flesh. it is far truer than poems. ❞
I. INTRODUCTION.
name ― utp.
age ― utp.
species ― demon.
gender & pronouns ― utp.
face claim ― utp.
status ― open.
II. DIGGING DEEPER.
you had a sibling once. before the hunger, before the centuries, there was just the two of you, and the world was small enough that that felt like enough. you don't say their name anymore. you stopped, somewhere in the second century, when you realized you couldn't trust yourself to get it right. you remember their hands. that's what's left: their hands, and the sound of their breathing before the sickness made even that difficult. they were dying, slowly and painfully, of a curse that didn't care what you were or what you could do.
you were arrogantly young then. you believed that power existed to be used, that anything wrong could be made right if only you willed it. you'd never been wrong about anything that mattered. you didn't know that was about to change. you found the hunger sleeping beneath the earth and reached into it, certain you could take what you needed and leave the rest undisturbed. but instead, the hunger woke, and your sibling died anyway, three days later, the curse finishing what it had started regardless of what you had done or broken or unleashed. everything that came after traces back to three days when you were desperate and certain and wrong.
the guilt does not diminish. you thought it would, once, but it doesn't. it just becomes part of what you are — something you move around rather than through, something that has been there so long you've stopped noticing the weight of it. immortality never brought you wisdom or distance, just the endless carrying of what you set in motion when you were young enough to believe you couldn't be wrong.
you have spent centuries looking for the thing that would end it. you believe — have believed for a very long time — that the hunger cannot be destroyed from above. that what is required is a descent. but you have not told anyone what that descent will cost. you have not told anyone that this all began with you either. others might call you ruthless, immoral. but you have never vowed to be good — you only vowed to end this. some things are worth the price, and you've seen enough pointless death for a lifetime.
so now here you are, in a room full of slayers and mortals and creatures, all of them circling the same wound from different directions, none of them with the full picture. you have insinuated yourself into their circle. they don't fully trust you. they are right not to. but you have been patient for a very long time — patience is the one thing centuries are reliably good for. maybe this time, you will have waited long enough.
III. CONNECTIONS.
the talisman ― you told them what they were because they deserved to know. that's what you tell yourself. the more honest version is that you couldn't be in the same room as them and say nothing, couldn't watch them try to cancel out something that came from your sibling's bloodline without saying so. you care about them. you hadn't planned on that. after centuries of patience and distance, it is an inconvenient and specific thing to feel, but there it is. you don't know what you owe them. your sibling died centuries before they were born. the debt isn't theirs to collect and it isn't yours to pay, and yet here you are, carrying the weight of someone who carries your blood and doesn't fully understand what that means yet. you are patient with almost everything. you are finding it harder to be patient with this.
the tome ― you kept your distance from people, as a rule. a careful habit formed from centuries of patience and discipline. and then there was them, and you didn't keep your distance, and you've been sitting with that ever since. it started out as a means to an end, another calculation in a series of calculations to manipulate your way into the circle. but it became something more than that. you admire their intelligence, their strength, the way they held themselves together through sheer will. you find them genuinely compelling, which is rarer than you'd like to admit. they don't know what you are. you've told yourself that's why you haven't gone back. you're not sure you believe it.
the dark ― the hunger woke because of you. the gate opened because of you. the cycles, the sacrifices, the slayers, all of it traces back to three days when you were wrong. and they are what the hunger made in the centuries that followed, the most direct line of consequence you have ever had to look at. the anger is easier than the alternative. it's cleaner, more directional, somewhere to put the weight of what you can't take back. they know what you are. you know what they are. there are only two of you in this room old enough to understand the full cost of what the hunger has done, and the debt between you is not finished. you have been patient for a very long time. no matter what happens, you intend to see this through.
the veil ― you have watched the hunger consume people for centuries — you know exactly what it takes and what it leaves behind. they are exactly the kind of person this town consumes. you know that. you've watched it happen before, too many times to count, and you have never once intervened. and yet here you are, aware of how they look at you, aware of what that means and what you could do with it, and you haven't. that's the surprising part. after centuries of calculation, you find yourself hoping they stay exactly as they are for as long as possible. you know what the descent requires. you know what this summer will cost. you're not sure they are a cost you're willing to pay. you haven't figured out what to do with that yet.
The cold rain seeped through the many layers she wore, instead of finding warmth in her clothing choice all it did was trap in the cold. Darcy sighed, ducking under an awning and glaring up at the sky for a second. She was too far from the apartment to turn back now without at least getting some kind of reward for the effort of venturing out. With a deep breath, she pulled her hat down over her damp curls, ducked her head and shoved her hands into her pockets as she hurried through the still heavy foot traffic of New York. Her boots splashing in the puddles as she made her way quickly through the crowds.
The coffee from that place she saw several recommendations for online better be worth it, or else she’ll be short a couple bucks and soaked through and through. She’ll honestly be lucky if this venture doesn’t end up with her sick.
Ducking beneath another awning, she pulled her phone from her pants pocket and swiped her thumb across the screen, looking up at the street signs and nodding, satisfied she was almost there. One last glance at the crowd, she put her phone back into her pocket and darted out in the rain, not stopping until she was beneath the awning of the coffee shop she’d been in search of.
Upon opening the door she was greeted with a warm blast of air and sighed happily, stepping out of the way of the door and taking advantage of the coat rack just inside. She paid no attention to the eyes on her as she took of her hat, unwound her scarf and removed her jacket, handing them all on a peg by the door before shuffling her feet against the entry way carpet and making her way up to the menu board.
She has to pause and remove her glasses and use the semi-dry hem of her sweater to dry off her glasses before she’s able to actually read the menu. Biting her bottom lip, she gestures for people that came in after her to go first as she contemplates what she wants, eying a few other peoples orders before she nods to herself and steps up to the counter with a smile.
“Hi, how can I help you?” The server greets, and Darcy smiles.
“Hi, can I get a large caramel macchiato, extra caramel with whipped cream, a cup of chicken noodle soup and half a turkey club?”
“Sure, not a problem. Can I have your name?”
“It’s Darcy.”
The sever nods, and scrawls Darcy’s name across an actual porclean cup in some kind of chalk marker and rings her up. “That’ll be 15.50, it’ll be up in a few minutes. You can grab a seat, we’ll call you when it’s ready.”
Darcy digs into her pocket, pulling out her debit card and a few singles, swiping the card as she shoves the cash into the tip jar. “Great, thanks. Where’s your restroom?”
“Down the hall, first door on your left.”
“Thanks, I’ll be right back.” Turning on her heel, Darcy hurries down the hall to use the restroom and wash her hands, she makes a face at her appears and peels her sweater off from over her t-shirt and rings it out before finger combing her hair. Deeming it was decent enough she exits the bathroom and heads to a comfortable chair in a corner, setting her sweater across it’s back just as her name is called.
Moving to the counter she collects her food and drinks and curls up in her previously claimed chair, fishing her phone from her pocket once more, she unwinds the headphones and sticks one bud into her ear, head bobbing to the music as she takes a sip of her coffee, humming happily as it begins to warm her from the inside out, she opens a document she needs to work on for Jane and sits in the relative quite and comfort of the coffee shop.
It’s one of those night that no matter how much she tosses and turns, what pillow she snuggles or what blanket she kicks from the bed, she just can’t sleep.
Darcy likes sleep, too bad it tends to run from her. But there’s something in the air tonight, a static charge she knows well and it causes a grin to tug at the corner of her lips.
Silently, she pulls herself from bed grabbing the fleece blanket at the end and her favorite pillow and pads her way out of her apartment and up towards the common area of the tower.
Setting down her blanket and pillow she moves about the kitchen with ease, silently and effortlessly fixing herself a cup of hot chocolate that has just the right amount of caramel in it that it’s like heaven on her tongue, an excessive amount of whipped cream on top and she’s set, returning to her designated perch just as the first clap of thunder rattles the windows and the storm rolls in.
Curling up she sets her mug down, reaching into a drawer next to the couch for the lighter she’d stashed there to light the few candles on the side-table, once her task is complete she wraps her hands around the mug, letting it warm her finger tips and settles down to watch the storm roll in
It was a beautiful day. The sun had yet to fully rise and in the shadows of the tall buildings it was still pleasantly cool. People rushed by on the streets to get to their jobs or any other important engagement that would fill up their time. Pedestrians shouted, cars horns blared, and cyclists got in the way of both of them.
Loki had settled in at a table on the patio of a little cafe with decent tea, acceptable pastries, and wonderfully subservient waitstaff. It had quickly become one of his favorite little places in the city both because of the respect he was treated with there and the wide view of a busy street that if afforded him. It was the perfect place to sit and cause a little chaos.
Not that he needed to do anything too big to keep himself happy. Just a quick flick of his fingers to cause another customer’s drink to spill down their shirt was enough to bring a smile to his face. And who would think to look twice at the quiet blond minding his own business when little things like that went wrong? He felt secure in the knowledge that none of these mortals had ever gotten a decent enough look at his face to be able to recognize the passing resemblance this disguise held to his true form.
