TIMING: 3 January PARTIES: Eve @technowarden and Jenny @whimmortal LOCATION: Jenny’s living room SUMMARY: Eve comes over unannounced to have a talk with Jenny CONTENT WARNING: None
Back in college, Jenny had written an essay about what made a literary monster. She’d written countless essays and academic texts on such subjects, pulling them apart and unthreading them until she could use them to score a high grade and have something to talk about. She had scoured books and other people’s research and thinkpieces to come to a conclusion about what literary ingredients made a monster and how those ingredients were changed overtime or based on cultural context.
She didn’t need any research now. No think pieces. No input from death authors like Mary Shelley or Robert Louis Stevenson. Jenny knew what she was. She knew that inside her there was a monstrous thing and that even though she was still trying to figure out the line between that thing and herself, it made her a monster all the same. She, or something within her, had harmed Henri beyond repair and killed a stranger walking the streets. Whether there was a line and if so, where it separated herself from that part of her — it mattered little.
So, she wallowed in that knowledge. She’d locked herself in her townhouse. She dropped off Edward at Baz’ place with plenty of his toys, treats and other things. She put on one of her more depressing records on. She locked herself in the bathroom with one of the bloodbags Jade’s friend had given her, splattering tiles and herself as she fed. Lapping it all up with that tongue of hers, breaking those same tiles and her perfume bottle in the process.
And now she sat on the floor, back leaning against the couch. Bauhaus wallowed in the background. Jenny tried not to think about the taste of Henri’s blood in her mouth.
—
Henri would be furious if she was here. He didn’t exactly get much say in the matter, though, not right now. It wasn’t that Eve was angry at him, not when she had made errors of judgement of her own that had carried an equal weight but… he was soft on the supernatural. The truth was that it did not matter that Eve liked Jenny, or that Henri liked Jenny, or that anyone liked Metzli. Here was the truth, plain and simple: the Supernatural might not want or choose to be a threat, but that did not change that they were. Hunters might not want to kill, it might not be a good thing that they did, but it was necessary.
What Eve did was necessary too, even though right now that gave her little comfort. She wore a concealed Kevlar vest under her blouse today, and a motorbike leather jacket on top. A long blade hung from her hip, and that did not offer her much comfort either. She knocked and then pushed open the front door of Jenny’s apartment, where she had been several times before.
“Jenny. I know it’s a bad time, but we need to talk. How are you feeling?” Are you in a ravenous rage, was what Eve wanted to ask.
—
The sound of a familiar voice sent a shiver through her system. She had not been expecting visitors because she had not been inviting visitors. Jenny felt that she existed best with just herself now, returning back to her days of teenage misery where she hid in her room and clung to media to soothe her tumultuous mind. But of course, the teenage angst she’d felt then hardly compared to the weight of Henri’s lost arm and a dead man on her mind.
Bauhaus kept droning on in the background until she’d gotten up to remove the needle from the vinyl. She waited for Eve to enter the room to address her, standing next to the record player as if frozen. At least she’d managed to brush her hair today. At least she’d wiped the flecks of blood from her feeding session in the bathroom from her face.
“I’m great,” she said, unable to keep a sardonic tone from entering her voice. She closed her eyes for a moment, gestured at one of the many seats when she opened them again. What did Eve know? What did she want to talk about? Surely it wasn’t something as mundane as their arrangement. Something like Eve having caught feelings for her or someone else, something that would mess with the casual fun they’d had before the world had fallen from underneath her feet.
She felt nerves strike through her. She watched Eve carefully. “What do you want to talk about?”
–
“Are you?” Eve asked curiously, her eyes scouring over Jenny huntingly. She was looking for traces of blood, knew where it might get caught in clothing seams or creases of the skin. Elbows were missed surprisingly often, especially if you were prone to dry skin and forgot to moisturise. (That had never been Jenny, though. The person in front of her looked too drained of life to much remind her of Jenny. Eve had no idea how much of that was her actual death, or her metaphorical one. It didn’t matter.)
There was no point in beating around the bush. There were places for delicacy, but they were not at your own grave, not after dining on your friend’s arm. Eve stepped into the apartment, and perched herself on the arm rest of one of Jenny’s couches, gesturing for Jenny to sit. Her eyes never left Jenny, not even once, and she moved with a grace that she usually hid. Her gun was heavy at her hip, but it wouldn’t be the weapon she’d reach for if Jenny began to change.
“You.” Eve said gently. “How you're coping with your death, and how I might be able to help you now.” She didn’t mention how intimately familiar she was with death, on both sides of the curtain. Nor that she wishes she had known when Jenny had died, so that she could have retrieved her corpse, and done what she always knew Henri couldn’t have. It was still a lingering regret about how she had handled Emilio’s death, even though she was glad she was still alive. (Something that wouldn’t be true twice over if she had killed Emilio.) “I’m really sorry that this happened to you, Jenny. No one deserves this.”
—
Eve questioned her answer, and after that sat on an arm rest, not a seat, and gestured for Jenny to sit in her own home. Though occasionally delusional, she had a dreary sense that this was going to be a serious conversation. She sat down on her couch as invited, as if she had suddenly walked into Eve’s living room and was relying on her hospitality. It might as well be that way, because when the other took charge of the conversation, Jenny felt fully out of her depth.
So Eve knew. Eve knew she had died (and been reborn, an important distinction) and now she was sitting in her living room offering her aid. What aid was there? What could Eve offer? Jenny remembered when they had met, when she had wondered if the other was a vampire and had let go of that conclusion. She remembered the scars littering her body, the multitude of proof of violence that marred her. She stared at Eve and wondered who had told her, who was close to her like that, but most of all, she wondered what she was.
She seemed so very human. “How do you know?” The question was posed forwardly, yet warily. It seemed those were the only words she’d speak composedly, because she felt her bottom lip start to tremble. She had been crying a lot these days. Whatever cold emotional coolness came with vampirism in some literature had certainly passed her. Her throat became lodged and she felt her eyes sting. She let out a huff of air that seemed almost like a laugh, but lacked all humor. Eve was offering her sympathies and she did not know what to faced with them besides cry. “I don’t —” She covered her eyes with her hands, pressing her palms into the sockets as she breathed in. “What do you mean, help?”
—-
“I know Henri,” Eve answered simply, barely a trace of emotion in her voice, despite all the weight it carried. In those three words, there was every flirting kiss, every late night poured over books, the question Henri had asked the morning that they had handled the inflatable snowman. And then the phone call, the apartment, the excruciating numbing watching of the minutes ticking by until the surgery ended. It even held seeing him in his hospital bed, and not regretting her answer, despite everything. But she had not forgotten who had put him there. Who had carted off his arm like a midnight snack. She looked at Jenny with all the gentleness she could summon, her mask perfectly fused in place. Flinch, she thought, give me a reason to draw my blade. “He didn’t tell me, to be clear. I guessed.” Another loaded sentence. Jenny had never, ever been subtle. Anyone who knew anything at all would have been able to connect those dots.
Her lip curled up in a slightly wry smile, briefly. “He would not be a fan if he found out I was here. For several reasons,” Eve admitted. “I keep the supernatural secret from humanity. To protect them from the dangers and… temptations of knowing.” A sick pit settled in her stomach, but she kept going. “Which sometimes means I cover up what supernatural beings do. Something I’m sure you can understand the importance of.”
—
As Eve talked, Jenny pulled her legs on the couch, unconsciously making herself smaller and easier to hold together physically. Mentally, that was a battle lost, but she could at least embrace herself somewhat. Eve knew Henri, that would not be a shocking revelation on any other day, but in the face of what had happened the week prior, it was a devastating thing. Henri had been ripped in two, the separation line mercifully on his arm and not his throat or stomach. It was she who had done it. Or the she that wasn’t her, but that lived inside her. The monster that was dormant now but which even now recalled the taste of his acidic blood, the anticipation that had come after she had severed the arm.
“I didn’t — you know I didn’t mean to, I never meant to…” she began, voice reaching a higher pitch. She had been trying to come up with excuses for what she (or the monster within, if it could be distinguished from the Jenny sitting on the couch) had done for days now. She hadn’t come up with a solid one yet. “It was an accident.” That one was pitiful. But it rang somewhat true.
Eve had also said something about keeping the supernatural a secret from humanity and doing cover up. The importance of which made sense to her, sure. If she had never known about it, she would just be an ignorant human wasting time on a play right now while trying to fit into the small town life. “You’re not …” doing a good job of it then. She swallowed the rest of the words. It seemed pissing Eve off right now was a bad idea. And even Jenny knew it was unfair to project what she was going through on the other. “Sure. What does … that mean? Now.” Did cover up and protection include elimination? Did Jenny have to ask another (former?) friend to not kill her? She dug her nails in her knee. “What are you here for?”
—
Eve’s gaze hardened as Jenny shrank in on herself. Henri was in a hospital bed. For a couple days, Eve had been wondering if his own bloodlust would set in, and if she would have to do for him what he had failed to do to Jenny. At least one person was dead - realistically, far more.
The most central part of being a hunter was knowing what you were. Delusion into thinking you were a hero, or that the people you killed weren’t people, was what lead to the eventual moral compromise and the emotional instability of hunters that fell that way. What will you do if he cries, Jake had asked Eve on the night of her first hunt. Do it anyway. Own the pain that you will cause those families and communities, and learn not to flinch.
That Jenny could not even summon a sorry, only an excuse, and a shift of the blame, was pathetic. There had been moments over the past few months where Eve had looked at Jenny with a heady lust that had almost knocked out her ability to think. She had gotten caught up in the woman’s easy charisma. There was none of that now. She might have even understood if Jenny had held her ground, just shrugged and just acknowledged it as part of her nature. Eve would not have liked it, but she would have respected it more than this. “Of course you didn’t mean to.” Eve replied, her voice still perfectly even, calm as a forest without birdsong, “But it doesn’t really matter, does it? You still almost killed him. You still ripped off his arm.”
But that didn’t matter either, not right now. Because Henri had asked, and Eve had agreed. She would not send another slayer to do what he had failed to do. She would not attack Jenny herself, even though her body throbbed with the need to, her want for vengeance so thick she thought Emilio might be able to feel it. If she did it right now, Jenny would not even see it coming, would barely feel it before her head hit the floor, rolling for a second before turning to blood. But she had promised. Unless Jenny made the first move, Eve's blade would stay sheathed.
“I’m here,” Eve began, pushing down the lump in her throat, filling up the pit in her stomach, “to remind you that you have my number. And that when you kill again, you owe it to your victim to call me. I can give their family answers and closure that their corpse might otherwise not.” Her gaze softened slightly. “And, to protect others from what happened to you. You want that, don’t you?”
—
A few weeks ago she would have bucked against the words Eve spoke. Would have gathered excuses, grasping at them like straws and holding them close to her chest. In her diary she had tried to rationalize and make this right, but she had been hitting walls even when it was just her and her thoughts. The man she had killed the night she’d turned? The woman she had ripped apart after what had happened with Henri? Those she was able to file away as accidents, as horrible things that had happened and shouldn't have. But with Henri she could not find it within her to make such explanations mean enough.
“No,” she said quietly. It didn’t matter. She had come to Henri’s for help and had ruined his life in stead. She had refused his suggestions of putting her in a place where she was safe and others were safe from her. She had come begging when it was too late, when the hunger was already scratching her up from the inside out. She hadn’t meant to, but she had still driven her car there when she was teetering on an edge. Jenny knew that. She had no energy or delusion left to deny that. “It doesn’t.” She swallowed thickly. Henri had ignored her text until he'd told her to fuck off, and she knew that there was no apology that could make this right.
She glance at her hands for a moment. “How is he?” She could muster a vague picture of what had happened after. Hospital, surgery, a pale Henri sleeping in a hospital gown. At least he was alive. Right? Jenny wasn’t sure if she was owed an explanation of how Henri was. She had ways and means of punishing herself, most originating from teenage depression years, but non seemed to work now.
Eve did not seem to be here to kill her, at least. It wasn’t a large comfort. Maybe that was what she needed — for someone to punish her, properly. Not by looking at her with anger or disgust or an unspoken I told you so, but to whip out a stake and attempt to sign her death warrant. The permanent one this time. But Eve was offering something that sounded an awful lot like help. A person who could help fix up her murders. Future ones, which she wanted to avoid but seemed inevitable. “Yes,” she murmured, “Of course I want that. So … you would not call the cops or someone … like a slayer? Or —” Her lip trembled for a moment. “I wouldn’t blame you, if you did. But I have to ask. I don’t –” Want to die. It felt pathetic to ask. Her voice got caught for a moment. “Want to kill or hurt anyone again, you know.”
—
Some part of her hadn’t expected Jenny to ask how Henri was. She had expected Jenny to forget about him, to be so focused on her own moral injury that she would lose sight of the bigger one. It was a small, welcome surprise, but that didn’t matter much either.
“Alive and healing,” Eve replied coolly. “Any possible positive outcomes here are entirely a credit to his surgical team and his own strength of character. He’ll heal, and he’ll adapt, but it will take time. Years. It’s not just the writing, the drawing, or lifting things. There’ll be a hundred things you and I will never even think of that he’ll have to solve. But there will always be some things that are more difficult than they are worth the effort, and most things will be slower than he’s used used to. You have cost him time that, as a hunter, he was already short on.” Henri filled his time. There was never a minute of the day that he wasn’t using for researching, or hunting, or making his online videos, or with his friends and loved ones. Henri had never wasted his time in his life, and now he would have less of it. If he even survived a normal hunter lifespan. Not many hunters who had such severe injuries did. “And without an arm, even shorter.”
Meanwhile, Jenny had an infinity of it. Hers would be sustained on the deaths of others, of course. As much as humanity wanted to help, it also wanted to profit, especially at others' expense. Eve looked away. Her voice hadn’t trembled, hadn’t shifted from the near perfect monotone as she’d spoken. Her words had no bite or edge, at least not in tone. And yet.
“I don’t think we should talk about Henri anymore.” Or she might not keep her promise, and she’d give Jenny a red necklace that would not come off.
Better to focus on the real reason Eve was here. Although, if she was honest with herself, this could have been a phone call. The only reason she was sitting in front of Jenny was to have the opportunity to break her own personal code. She still might get it.
“No,” Eve agreed, as she had agreed with people far more monstrous than the woman who had eaten her boyfriend’s arm. “I won’t tell anyone. But I expect something in return. You can’t post about the supernatural online anymore. You can’t tell humans about it, not even your friends. Over the next few years, you’re going to have to fade out of people’s lives, and stop posting pictures of yourself. You won’t be able to explain how you look like this forever, and facial recognition technology is just too good now. Obviously, this also helps you.”
—
Eve was different. Jenny had gotten to meet her as someone breezy and exciting, someone who had distracted her from her attempt to mingle in a vampire bar (a memory that gained a new dimension now). But Eve was not chatting as easily as she usually did. She was talking, a fair lot, but her tone was cool and unshaking. Like a knife, cutting her precisely. Or a whip, lashing her with the consequences of what she had done. Or the she that was not she. She was still not sure where to draw the line.
It would be so easy to pass the blame to the monster that she now housed within, but she struggled to. Especially now. Her mouth felt numb as words tried to make their way through her throat and into the world, getting caught somewhere in between. She should be saying something to Eve now. Something that showed responsibility and remorse. Something that would make it okay. But horrible thoughts flashed through her mind. That it was all for nothing. That the blood had tasted horrible. That it wasn’t on her, that his time had already been short. That she hadn’t been able to help herself.
“I …” She pulled her knees closer. Her nails continued to dug into soft flesh. “I’m sorry. I really never meant – I never – I am.” It felt futile. Empty. She wondered what Eve wanted from her. If she wanted her on her knees, sobbing and snotty. If she wanted her to bare her neck or something of the sort. But Eve said that she didn’t want to talk about it any more and that was a bit of relief.
“Okay,” Jenny said. “Alright.” That would be easier. The news that Henri was alive and healing though, were stored away and kept close to her chest. It was good news. Good enough news. The bare minimum she could hope for.
And then Eve went on, because the precise cuts about Henri’s permanently altered situation were not enough. Part of her wanted to disappear into herself, the way she had been trying to these past days, but it was hard to. “Oh,” she said. Her mind went to her family, who had been confused about her absence at Christmas, her quietness and evasiveness. That alone had made her chest felt like it was caving in, the way she had maneuvered that. But there was the future, too. Where she would outlive her family. And she had thought that one through before she had gotten into all this, but she had expected to at least see them a little bit more. But seeing them now was not an option. There was no weaning herself off of them if the reality existed where she ate her nephew. “That all makes sense. Sounds … logical, yeah. I can do that.” She would have Baz on her side, at least. She and them, forever against the world. “So, yeah. Yeah, okay.” A beat. “So you knew … all along?”
—-
For a brief moment, as Jenny stumbled through her apology, Eve’s mask dropped, her lip curled upwards, and she stared at the woman with something resembling disgust. It was better for both of them that Jenny grabbed at her offer like a drowning man grabbed at a life raft. The next moment, her face was a perfect mask of neutrality once more. There was nothing left to be said. Eve had one of the first every promises that she actually meant to keep, and Jenny’s tongue had not made an appearance. There had been no opportunity to declare self defense. Eve pressed her thumb nail into the palm of her hand, tempted to change that. To give herself reason to draw the blade by forcing Jenny into acting. But that was cruel, and more importantly, it was not smart. One of them had to be smart.
“Good,” Eve acknowledged as Jenny agreed that her requirements were logical. That was it then, she was done. She pushed herself to standing, and smoothed down her leather jacket. At Jenny’s question, a small sad smile flicked to her face, heavy with the regret of someone she had failed to save. (But that was what hunters did, wasn’t it? The failure rate was higher than the rescue rate, by design. If it wasn’t, far more supernatural beings would have gone extinct by now.) “Yes, I did.” She said, slinging her bag back over her shoulder, and starting to walk towards the door. Eve spun a ring around her finger, and it felt like ice to the touch. “I liked you a lot, Jenny. I am truly, very sorry that this happened to you.” And if you ever touch my friend again, I will rip you limb from limb.
Eve turned to the door, the first time she’d looked away from Jenny since stepping in here, but paused as her hand touched the handle. “Obviously, this conversation requires your complete discretion too. I’m sure I’ll hear from you soon.”
—
She did not want to think about her family in front of Eve. She did not want to be in front of Eve, struggling to conceptualize the reality that stretched out in front of her. All of it had felt so very surreal since she had come to pass but it was in moments like this that the haze seemed to disappear and reality crashed around the corner. Jenny felt the weight of it now, the tightness of consequence. She had become something unspeakable and even though she fought tooth and nail to separate herself from the monster within, she was faced with the ramifications all the same. There was no walking out of this. No leaving the scenes on the cutting room floor.
She wanted to talk to Baz or Rosemary, who were softer to her. On another hand, she figured she deserved this in a way.
Eve said she had liked her. Past tense. She understood what this meant — their friendship had gained a full stop and was over now. Jenny did not know what to do with the pity. It wasn’t an accusation, telling her that she’d sought this out and was paying for it now. But she didn’t feel comforted by it, just as she felt like Eve wasn’t comforted by it either. “Me too,” she murmured, self pity an easily accessible emotion even if she understood she had no right to it. At least not right now, not in front of Eve.
For a moment she remained seated as Eve got up and walked to the door. Then Jenny got up, following the other. There were questions she wanted to ask, but she didn’t start pelleting them just yet. Maybe she would refrain for a long time. “I understand,” she said, halting at a distance from Eve. “I … hope not. But I will.” She wrapped her arms around herself as she watched the other leave. “Bye, Eve.” It seemed important to say those words. To really add a full stop to their friendship. Once the door closed behind her, it seemed finalized.
