#she might? take on a protege? but also fully with the energy of 'literally why me tho'

[ventruevitae]

Would Kat or Mitchell consider making their own Childer, or seriously taking on a protégé? :3

while i think it would be fun to answer yes the truthful answer is definitely more of a resounding Hell No lmao

kat's embrace was really goddamn traumatic, to say the least, & her sire did a fantastic job of making it worse for the better part of a decade before she broke away from him. apollonnio was legitimately fucked up even by ventrue standards & she suffered thoroughly for it. she also carries the guilt (whether justified or not) of knowing that her youngest sister would have dodged the lasombra if kat was never brought into the camarilla. she can't picture any kind of situation where she would willingly ruin someone's life in the same way, even if she also knows that she wouldn't treat any childe of hers like she was treated or even like she would be expected to by the camarilla standards of her clan.

even stripping all of THOSE reasons away, still a no lol. she's more or less raised 4 kids at this point after she had to step in for her deceased mother, so she'd be too prone to taking on too much responsibility for her childe & stressing herself out Way too much all the time. (ironically in life, she actually did want children of her own, but that dream's been completely destroyed & it's definitely a no-go area in conversation.) on the flip side, the fact that she's so used to taking on that type of role means that a lot of fledglings (especially new ventrue runaways) are drawn to her. she'll huff and pretend to be more bothered by it than she actually is, but honestly? she's also the person who ends up being the quickest to help in a bad situation. she's great at stepping up for anyone (outside of herself, but shh), definitely not a bad choice if you're looking for someone to fill a bit of your sire-less void. she'd never actually seriously mentor someone 1:1, though--again, it's the trauma. she's pretty hard-pressed to let herself get attached to anyone these days, knowing how badly losing people has fucked her up before (& she's really only started to heal from that, 50 years later) so aside from a select few kindred, she tries to maintain a bit of a personal distance. is this always effective? not... exactly. more of a placebo effect if anything, but she at least feels like she's doing something to protect her heart.

mitchell is a bit of a grey area here? her biggest strike is that she's just really not all that interested. if we're comparing experiences, mitchell comes out the winner purely because her sire got executed before she even got to know him (she thinks he might have sold her some drugs, but that doesn't mean much of anything). she doesn't have the hangups but also can't really picture a situation she would feel compelled to do it in. she doesn't even feel all that bad if she accidentally takes too much blood during a feeding tbh. out of her two most frequently seen partners, vv hasn't sired anyone (that she's aware of), and beckett's choice of a vampire hunter was... a questionable decision at its absolute best (she thinks he was dumb as hell for that one, actually, and it doesn't really matter what either he or even anatole might have to say about it--although, anatole might actually be on her side here?).

even when heather was around, the motivation to embrace her just wasn't there. it might have something to do with being put through the ringer for the first few weeks mitchell spent as kindred, or she might also just not want the responsibility. as detached as she is, she does think it's a little bit objectively shitty for your sire to just leave you on purpose, particularly for malkavians. tbh if she didn't get to know anatole through beckett, she'd probably feel significantly more lost than she does, & that's not really a relationship she would compare to a stand-in sire.

anyway, she's a hard Maybe. she doesn't have some big painful reason why she's avoiding it, & who knows? she might just meet the right person at the right time who would handle it well.