❝ I crave touch, yet I flinch every time someone is close enough
Below the cut are both Helen and Alexander Leslie's (NPC) stories
Name: Helen Reed Leslie // Alexander Leslie Age: 25 // Looks 31 but is 140 Species: Human // Vampire Lives in: White oaks Occupation: none // dealer of illegal substances, items and blood Affiliation: none // none
Family:
Mother, father, older sister and brother
None alive
Powers: none // since coming to Greywood he has grown more in control of his mood swings Hobbies: reading, taking walks (she used to love horse riding when home with her parents and taking care of animals, as well as baking simple breads, also used to draw and play the guitar) // N/a
HELEN
tw: alcohol, drunk, abuse, kidnapping, toxic relationship, delusion
Helen was born to the Reed family, a prosperous and big family, proud owners of a ranch near Turnersville, Texas… which she always thought was out in the middle of nowhere and a place she needed to escape. They were three kids, her the middle one, with a bigger sister and a smaller brother that all doted on as if he were made of gold. Since he was born, when Helen was five years old, she felt left out of most things, her sister being 6 years older and her mother and father constantly hovering over the sickly baby that made too much fuss. She couldn’t say she did not love her family, but she wishes she could escape them all and build a castle in which to live.
That was until she turned thirteen and she stopped believing in fairytales, turning to her schoolwork and hard labor around the ranch. She was homeschooled and her contact with the outside world was mostly through the internet and a few visits here and there where she could go with her father.
By the time she turned eighteen, she had a bag ready with things and left for Tennessee, hitchhiking and sleeping behind bars and using what little money she had saved up throughout the years for food. What would usually be a twelve-hour trip took her a week and a half and in the end, she found a job as a waitress at a local diner. The world outside of the ranch wasn’t as great as she had seen online, but it wasn’t also as dangerous as it had appeared. After living on the couch of a colleague for half a year she managed to save enough to put in for rent and changed jobs to a bar where she earned far more and getting the job after lying about her age. For the next year and a half as she was closing twenty one, she was just drifting through life, relying a bit too much on alcohol to get through the afternoons before work, hanging out after it with some folks she had gotten to know through the years. Her parents had told her to come home, but she thought that if she just got a bit more money, maybe she could travel again and go to New York and live a dream life, meet a handsome man, go to parties and experience something else than what she had so far.
One night at work her dream began coming to life, she thought. She met a handsome young man with dark hair and pale skin, very charming, a gentleman who always tipped and sometimes waited almost until closing hours to talk with her. At first, she thought he had wanted to play a game with her, get her to go home with him as many had done… but when she finally agreed to go to his apartment after a shift instead they talked for hours on end into the day, sitting in the shadows of the basement he had made into a home. Se didn’t remember much but a sting and feeling weak back then, but when she went to work she was tired and barely stood on her feet. A month later she had stopped communicating with everyone but him and spent her days in his basement, the nights wobbling around the bar and missing him. Until there was no reason to miss him because she found all her meagre belongings next to his bed in boxes and the key from his door gone from her picket when she woke up on a day off, middle of the night, the room cold and dark.
Now, she couldn’t really describe what she had gone through and what has been happening for four years. She knew that she had almost never left his apartment, work forgotten, her own apartment’s lease ended. She had holes in her neck where he kissed her and a constant desire to just sleep. She knew they had flown to Vegas and gotten married in a hotel chapel with Elvis next to them. She knew he wanted her to love him, but all she could feel was a longing for his presence, and a fear, and a desire to run away.
So when she woke up in the trunk of their car, feeling stronger than she had in a long time, his smile above her as he was opening it, she was confused. “We’re going to be freer here. You can make friends again and I will research if we can extend our family.” was what he had told her as he led her up the stairs of a new place, a small apartment with two rooms connected by a sliding door, the windows blackened. She had long since forgotten her mother existed and she had a family outside of him. All that had been on her mind was Alexander Leslie, a husband she wished would leave her alone, a possible impossible baby and the knowledge that at some point he wanted to make her like him.
Both Helen and Alexander think that it is indeed possible to have a baby together. Him because of the mental state he has been in since created as a vampire, her because he is the only vampire she has ever known and having no other supernatural contact.
ALEXANDER tw: kidnapping, torture, implied non-con, death, sickness , mention of suicide
Alexander Leslie was born in England in the early 1880s. His family were fishermen and they rarely wandered out of town, keeping traditions as much as possible. However, when he was 18 he asked his parents to go to London to study and perhaps bring back knowledge and more trade. He stayed there for 5 years, studying French, German and economics. But then he came home to a very sick father, his mother having died a few months back from a nasty virus, letters not having reached him as he had been travelling. After he said goodbye to both his parents' graves he left again, giving his younger brother all the land as he had married and was expecting a child. He stayed in London for three more years before traveling to France. When he got there he was 27. He fell in love with a widowed lady he met near the Louvre. They were to marry when she was killed. After her burial Alexander came home and found a strange woman in his dead fiancé's dress. This woman kidnapped him and took him to an estate outside of Paris where he was tortured and humiliated in all manners for what seemed like centuries. By the time he was turning 31 when he was turned he wasn't quite there. Created in a rather ugly way after being tortured he seemed to have developed a split personality to cope and continue. He can get super angry super fast if he’s in his dark periods but is otherwise quite charming and fun to be around. He fled to America to escape his creator and torturers as well as the war that was starting on the old continent. He started dealing with blood and stolen artefacts in order to make money as at first he lived in an abandoned hotel. He found out about Greywood and came and went throughout the last 50 years. When he’s here he has better control over his personality and while still not able to always think straight he doesn’t get as irrational as when outside the borders of the city. He has this inner desire from when he was a normal human to start a big family and has tried to keep a woman a few times but they usually kill themselves or leave him when he turns them if they reach that point. Helen is the only one who has managed to survive with him this long and he’s kind of managed to break fully to do his bidding. She looks a lot like his first fiancé and so he has decided she has been reincarnated and it is meant for them to live eternity together. Therefore despite his tendencies he is kinder to her than he had been to the others and plans to turn her into a vampire once they have a child - a thing he things ill be possible if he finds the correct witch to help him.
