#zofiawithaz

[singdreamchild]

TIMING: Christmas Night LOCATION: Cassius's house PARTIES: Cassius (@singdreamchild), Richard, Inge (@nightmaretist), Dis (@disinfernus), Zofia (@zofiawithaz) & Lukas (@lukas-dark-miracles) SUMMARY: The group of undead (and extremely old fae) get together for Christmas! CONTENT WARNINGS: None!

It had been Inge’s idea initially. Cassius had gone and visited her (with candy, as per her request), and she had the idea to have a gathering. The vampire suggested hosting, seeing as she was still mending, and he finally had a house to throw get-togethers at. When he had told Richard of the plan, the elder vampire was none too pleased. Still, he eventually relented when Cassius told him that it would be full of people who mattered to him and knew about Richard. “No hiding in the basement,” he had told his sire.

So that’s where the pair found themselves decking out the old Victorian house head to toe in Christmas decor. Cassius hadn’t gotten around to putting his spin on the house (namely, painting everything black and purple), but the old house had enough charm to it that it didn’t matter. Cassius gave Richard a pointed look when the doorbell rang and said, “Don’t disappear. These people have wanted to meet you.” 

Richard rolled his red eyes and nodded. “I’m not going anywhere.” He replied as he crossed his arms over his chest. The elder vampire’s features were twisted to look more batlike than human, which made him feel self-conscious. “Behave.” Cassius insisted in an exasperated voice as he hurried to open the door. 

Inge wasn’t much of a fan of Christmas, generally speaking. It reminded her of things long gone and aches not yet properly mended, but with her body still in pain and her usual ability to partake in shenanigans significantly limited, she figured she should do something. And it was funny, because there was actually something to do. A small group of people to gather together to have the most ungodly Christmas with.

She was still in pain, her movement still limited. It’d be a few months, Zane had said, and she wasn’t pleased about the constant reminder of her shortcomings. But she had ample distraction, and Dīs on her side. She was impressed by the Christmas decor, amused by Cassius’ dedication to the craft and rang the bell merrily.

Merrily, as in a piece of performance art. As in, she still wanted to cry and rage and throttle Siobhan and Rhett both. As in, she missed those same things long gone. When Cassius opened the door she smiled brightly and wiggled a bottle that read merlot. “I brought a gift!” It didn’t contain merlot. It contained blood. This was the time to be charitable, after all. “And also this bottle of wine.” She moved inside, a small twinge of pain marking her features and looked around with a look of surprised awe. “Damn.”

___________

It seemed Zofia’s social life was a concern to a host of undead. 

Inge had invited her to a little holiday get together. Then, later, Cassius had invited her to the very same party being hosted at his house. She had been amused to say the least. She had no intention to attend, of course. It was very kind of them all to be so very concerned, but frankly she wasn’t feeling particularly festive. 

She had fully intended on sitting alone and adjusting to silence again, when she received one final invitation. Richard, of all people had decided to extend the invitation. She wasn’t entirely sure why the invitation had given her pause. But for some reason  she had found herself getting wine and a little poinsettia plant, and heading over to  Cassius’s. 

The door opened and her mouth quirked up into an attempt at a smile “. Wesołych Świąt, Cassius “ she said, holding up the gifts. She breezed into the space and took in the faces around her. It was strange to not offer embraces in greeting, but she wasn’t sure it would be appreciated. “Hello kochanie,” she waved to Inge, and then her eyes fell on a familiar figure with golden eyes. “You. I know you.”

———-

Lukas was pretty happy to get out of his own house, his Sire’s apparent willingness to let him only raise a few alarm bells in his head. After all, it felt nice to do something lightly normal even if he was fairly sure that he was about to have a rough time of it. She seemed to be amused for being alone on a holiday, and that usually meant she had something in store for him. 

A bottle of Whiskey in his hand he gave a small smile to Cassius before nodding to Richard. “Ah I believe I’m the last - apologies. Inge - Dīs - it’s nice to see you. ” He didn’t comment that Lizzie had been chuckling at him, and how he was sure something bad was about to happen and that’s why he was late. After all, it was just as likely that she was doing so on purpose. He also didn’t make his way next to Cassius quite yet, wanting to be sociable. 

To the only person he didn’t know he outstretched his hand to shake hers, “I’m sorry I’m not sure I’ve met you. I’m Lukas.” 

———-

Christmas wasn’t something that the lampade, or their family, celebrated - nor any holiday, really, save for birthdays and accomplishments are various kinds, so when they were invited by Inge to go with her to a little festive gathering of friends, Dīs thought: why not? They liked Inge, would have liked Cassius more had it not been for the unwarranted snacking, and Lukas — Lukas was unusual but not unpleasantly so. They nodded to him in response, offering a placid, yet amicable smile.

It was just nice to be included for a change, even if they didn’t care for the decorations.

Among the familiar faces, there was one that they had never seen before and one they didn’t think they’d see again so soon. At least, not in this capacity. They hung back, assuming that the older and clearly vampiric figure would be introduced by the host, so Dīs directed their attention to Zofia once she and Lukas became acquainted. “And I know you,” they agreed, a little amused by the circumstances. “Apparently, this town is deceptively small.”

Cassius watched as everyone said their hellos, suddenly realizing there was a reason he didn’t host any occasions. It’s because he was bad at it. He wanted to hide in a corner and wait for the gathering to start itself. But, of course, this didn’t happen. Sensing his nervousness, Richard strode up alongside the vampire and gave a welcoming smile (or as welcoming a smile as a batlike creature of the night could look, anyway). “I am Richard, for those of you who have not met me, which is, well, all of you. He gave a glance over to Zofia and winked. “Except you.” The man’s voice was deep and velvety, contrasting the monstrous face he wore.

Cassius swallowed, a sudden discomfort building as he let his sire take over. Why did he always let him take over? His gaze fell to the floor as he let his sire speak. It was weird to suddenly take on that submissive role that he always took as soon as Richard had put himself in the forefront. Cassius always told himself it was because Richard knew what he was doing and was more experienced in life. But a part of him was telling him that it wasn’t exactly the case. 

Cassius took a deep breath and forced himself to look up to his guests again, feeling Richard’s piercing gaze. “Food and drinks are set up in the kitchen, which is down the hall to the left, and the tree and chairs are set up in the living room, which is to the right.” He gave a cheerful smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, but there was a clear attempt. Richard’s presence made his skin itch. Why did it make him so damn uncomfortable? He watched as Lukas introduced himself to Zofia and nearly froze. He had never told Lukas her name, had he? Sensing the young vampire’s fear, Richard placed a hand on Cassius’s shoulder before walking toward the living room. “Let it be,” the elder vampire insisted as he made himself scarce.

The only face Inge did not recognize had to be that of Richard, that big bad in Cassius’ life that she had grown to detest and grown to be intrigued by. “I’m Inge,” she said, purposefully not going for her full name. She glanced at Cassius, who seemed almost like a puppy at the feet of its owner and redirected her gaze to his sire. “It’s great to meet you after all the stories I’ve heard. Spare a moment for me tonight so we may get to know each other properly?” 

Her gaze was considerably warmer as it fell on Zofia, giving her a smile, “Hi lief,” she said, giving Lukas an equally warm smile in greeting. Her eyes flicked between the female vampire and Dīs, wondering how they’d met. “Well, there’s a story there …” She was intrigued, a bit excited that the two of them were familiar. Jealousy didn’t arise. She had no need for such things.

Inge considered their options. “Should we get a small bite, then, and gather in the living room?” She moved towards the left, not with the usual skip to her step. She had no need for this either, the ache that spread from her waist to her legs. She half considered moving by astral — she could here, after all. “You guys –” this was to all the vampires in the room, “– should really try this wine. It’s locally sourced and though it’s not a vintage …” She smiled. “It’s supposed to be a good year. ‘93 if I’m correct?” 

____________

Zofia’s mouth tugged up into a small smile, and amusement glimmered in her usually cloudy eyes as the other vampire introduced himself. They certainly hadn’t met, but she knew who Lukas was. She’d watched him and Cassius when she’d first come back to town and her mind was worse for wear. She’d also become familiar with the name through his sire. And if Elzbieta Kowalska was his sire… “Lukas. Hello, kuzynie.” She said with a bad. “I’m Zofia.” She wondered if Lizzie had said anything. It was more likely than not though that the mad old vampire had neglected to inform Lukas of her, for her own entertainment. 

Her gaze drifted back to the only fae in the room, the small smile still hanging tentatively on her face. “Decidedly so. Lovely to see you again, Dīs.” Then her eyes found Cassius looking… stressed? He had invited her, was her presence really that alarming? Zofia was mostly in control of her own mind that day, and holiday festivities weren’t likely to send her spiraling off the deep end. She rolled her eyes as the elder vampire shot her a wink, but the smile on her face tugged a bit wider. She’d by no means consider Richard a friend. But he certainly wasn’t her enemy any longer. Not if he held out his hand to help. 

Zofia let out a small laugh at Inge’s interest. “We met under… interesting circumstances. Our goals were similarly aligned.” Cassius probably wouldn’t want talk of vengeful murder and fae sparked madness at his holiday party. The vampire smirked as Inge described the contents of the wine bottle. “What region is it from?”

__________

Lukas blinked, not quite knowing why he was someone's cousin, but took it a little in stride not wanting to make it more complicated. Then it hit him on why that might be the case, he asked with a bit of a laugh , “Znasz więc Elżbietę? - Because you don’t look a little like my mom or dad’s side. In anycase, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Zofia.”  It was a small world after all, and part of him wanted to run out the door as he spoke, scared that his Sire would be there in a moment, and not wanting to appear too stressed. He couldn’t look at it after all. 

Still, his eyes followed Cassius’s and he paused something feeling off. Part of him wanted to go to him, but he didn’t want to intrude on him and Richard’s space knowing how much he was nervous around his own Sire.  So as Inge went to move he nodded and said, “Of course. It’s also lovely to finally meet you, Richard.” Moving to go to the room he said, “Excellent. I hope you don’t mind that I brought Whiskey. It was pretty standard in my family. I’m afraid I picked up the habit.” Glancing at Inge, he wondered briefly why she seemed to be straining, although thought better than to bring it up. 

 __________

When the stranger finally introduced himself, the energy seemed to shift. Not just from the guests, from the host, as well. There was a mixture of uneasiness and intrigue, both of which Dīs felt equally, but it was thwarted momentarily when Cassius took back the reins and explained the setup. They watched as Richard stalked off towards the living room; Inge's desire to know him better did leave an acrid taste, but they did their best to ignore it.

They were glad for the change in conversation, though intrigued as to why Zofia chose to leave out any details really about their impromptu interrogation. Was this not the time for such talk? There was more of a curiosity than disappointment, a want to understand. "Interesting is certainly one way to describe it. But I am glad they were, otherwise this conversation would be much different," — if they made it out in one piece, at all. If their collision with the vampire had soured because she chose not to show the grace she did that night, Dīs couldn't be certain that they'd escape the encounter unscathed.

"I'll explain more later," they directed to Inge, happy to share even the smallest of victories. "I think you may enjoy hearing it."

Drinks sparked the turn of attention. While blood wasn't exactly a drink of choice for the lampade, the whiskey would have to do. "There are worse habits to have," Dīs assured Lukas as their glass was filled. They stole a sip before continuing, "how have your meetings been? Are you still having them?" After their brief and awkward, yet enlightening conversation, they didn't really bother with keeping tabs on the community meetings.

 __________

Richard stopped in his tracks as Inge introduced herself. Yes, Cassius had mentioned her since his arrival. Cassius for his part, shot Inge a warning glare before turning his attention to his sire, who nodded toward Inge. “Lovely to meet you, Inge. I will not be hiding this evening, so you are sure to find me.” Richard’s gaze then fluttered over to Lukas, and his eyes narrowed. He didn’t know what to take of this new one, and he wasn’t so sure if he were to be trusted. After all, he knew his sire. And with that, the elder vampire disappeared into the living room, doing his best to hid the only way he could with the expectation from Cassius that he would be on his best behavior and socializing. He used to be so good at it, but not it made his skin crawl. What was he turning into? 

Cassius seemed to relax the second Richard disappeared, a soft sigh and a fake smile plastered onto his features as he looked to Inge and her bottle of so-called wine. “Yes, I’m sure it’s… great.” Cassius shook his head, unable to get himself back into the groove of things. There was something to be said about two of your exes and your current love being under the same roof. Maybe he was crazy for allowing such things to occur, but all three of them were genuinely important to him. 

The blonde’s gaze flitted back and forth between Zofia and Lukas’s exchange, a curiosity surging through him as she claimed to be family to him. Then, Cassius listened as Dis spoke of Lukas and his meetings. What meetings? A confused frown crossed his face as he looked over to Lukas. Instead of asking outright, he filed the question away for later. “Inge, Lukas, feel free to place them on the island in the kitchen. Presents go in the living room under the tree.” It was suddenly too much, so many people all knowing the most private things in his life. No, he had to get himself under control. So after taking a deep breath, Cassius turned to follow his sire to the living room. 

She flashed Cassius’ sire a bright smile that didn’t hide the mischief behind it. She’d been bored, restricted during her day hours and wallowing in self-pity/self-hatred. Pulling at the seams of an elderly vampire would be a welcome addition to what promised to be an interesting evening. Inge nodded at Cassius. “It’s glorious. I mean, so I was told — I haven’t tried it myself. I’ll be having regular wine.” To Zofia: “It’s local, of course.”

A small look was given to Dīs, one of excitement to see what they had to tell her, but she was off to the kitchen. Walk stiff, but back straight: Inge knew that if there were people to not hide her pain in front of it might be these people, but she still had her pride. Plopping the bottle of blood on the counter, she wondered if she should pop it open to let it ‘breathe’ or if that wasn’t a thing with blood. “Lukas, do you decant this? And I’d love a bit of whiskey.” She took an empty glass, sliding it towards him as she worked on picking out some food. Best to reconvene in the living room, she figured.

With enough to satiate her non-existent hunger for human food, she made her way over there, glad to sit down on a chair. The pain from her abdomen and lower back strained down to her legs but at least there was no more pressure. “This is much better than the crypt.”

_______

So you know Elżbietę? Zofia’s mouth curled into a smile at that. “My aunt. However distant a relation she may be.” What were a few hundred years to blood relations, after all? 

The smile widened as Dīs insinuated Inge would enjoy listening to the tale of their murderous evening. The hunter had without a doubt deserved it. And based on Inge’s recent encounters with hunters, it would likely be nice to imagine the face of the one who had done her harm on the other’s body. “A local vintage?” Zofia laughed softly. “Those fine ‘vineyards’ of Wickeds Rest will be delightful, I’m sure.”

She perched herself in a corner and watched as the others continued to interact.

———

The others' proclamation that she was his Sire’s niece only stilled him for a second before he shook his head slightly in amusement. “That would explain why she was excited for me to come.” Lukas didn’t mention that he was nervous now, his hands clutching at the bottle a little too firmly for protection. Still he went to open it, keeping the nerves off his face and the odd looks from Richard out of his mind. 

At the question Lukas chuckled and said, “Yes, I am still doing community outreach. They are going very well.  You are welcome back if you’d like.” He didn’t think the other would want to go back, but still the offer was always there. Pouring out the whiskey for both of the other two he shrugged lightly and said, “For a wine? Usually you would for a Red I believe. There you go.” 

———

Aside from the riveting tale about the death of that young hunter, there was plenty that Dīs wanted to speak to Inge about — mostly ask, if she was privy and willing to indulge their curiosity — but for the moment, they would enjoy her presence, even if she seemed keen on learning about the elder vampire. Truthfully, they couldn’t blame her. His introversion was interest piquing.

They caught a little of the back and forth between Lukas and Zofia, but they were more concerned with the vampires in the other room — and the whiskey in their glass. They stole another sip as their fingers picked at a few of the food items made available, though they felt just a hair uncomfortable with the knowledge that they were the only one that needed anything on their plate to survive, that they technically were a meal fit enough for the rest of them. It was an interesting position to be in, to feel like prey among predators, as awkward as they all seemed to be.

“Are they still being held on the same days? I’m afraid I haven’t kept track of the schedule,” they returned to Lukas after finding a rather lonesome seat with a leg crossed over the other and back straight. Dīs was surprised that he was even allowed back after the discomfort of their first meeting, that the offer was even being made to begin with. Regardless whether or not it was a genuine offer mattered not, they might have to take him up on it. If only to satiate their ‘nosiness’.

—

Cassius flitted about the kitchen, pulling out glasses for the various drinks. As he came upon the bottle of ‘wine,’ he shot a look at Inge before opening it up and pouring himself a glass. He made eye contact with Richard at that moment, then took a sip. Richard didn’t let anything show, but his monstrous face finally changed from monstrous to human. One of his many abilities that the older vampires could pull off, letting him blend in among them. Instead of batlike features, he looked just like anyone else. An older man with a hint of a beard and blue eyes instead of red.

Cassius smirked at the taste of the wine, his eyes glowing a brilliant red, proving to everyone that it was, indeed, blood. “Inge has always been good with picking out a good red.” He noted before moving to sit on the couch, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back. He listened to the various conversations, from Lukas hosting meetings to Inge’s comment. He snorted into his wine glass, shaking his head. “Much roomier than it too,” he shot back with a laugh. “I wonder how Mrs. Lindamann is doing.” He wondered, referring to the woman who actually was laid to rest in the crypt. “Oh well, I’m sure she’s glad I’m gone.”

The blonde’s gaze flitted over to Richard, who seemed content to be sitting in the other corner of the room that Zofia didn’t already occupy. Two well-adjusted vampires cooped up in the darkest corners of the room. He rolled his eyes and turned his attention to Lukas, who was pouring whiskey and speaking of his community outreach. Cassius didn’t know too much, it hadn’t come up in conversation organically, so for now, he simply listened to know more.  In truth, Cassius hadn’t celebrated a Christmas properly in over a century. And it was finally in Wicked’s Rest of all places that he finally had established a family of his own that was worth celebrating with. Surrounded by people he cared about, the blond vampire for once finally relaxed. He was content.

[deathsplaything]

Auld Lang Syne || Alistair & Zofia

TIMING: New Year's Day LOCATION: Out and about, then at Alistair's apartment PARTIES: Alistair (@deathsplaything) & Zofia (@zofiawithaz) SUMMARY: Alistair and Brutus run into a familiar face, and Brutus refuses to leave Zofia's side. CONTENT WARNINGS: None

It was a somewhat off day. It had been a busy holiday season between being understaffed at the tea shop and random walk-ins from those who needed his other services. He had been at Melody’s house and decided to walk home with Brutus leading the way, tongue lolled out the side of his mouth, happy as could be. It was getting darker to the point that he didn’t need the sunglasses for light sensitivity but kept them on to hide his scars. It was New Year’s, and Alistair had resolved to walk around town more. Might as well start today, he mused. 

Suddenly, Brutus took off, practically dragging the necromancer. “Brutus, what’s going on?” Alistair yelped, eyes comically wide behind his sunglasses. Brutus had caught sight of a familiar face and took it upon himself to drag his owner to greet Zofia. Brutus sat down before the woman, wagging his tail with great fervor. 

Frowning, Alistair quickly took on his familiar’s eyes, only to see the vampire that had attacked that innocent man in the alley. Instantly, the necromancer was on edge. They hadn’t exactly ended on good terms. “Sorry about him. Once he sees someone he remembers fondly, he forgets that he’s working.” He hissed the last part down at Brutus, clearly annoyed. “I’m sorry, I’ll… be on my way.” He attempted to tug Brutus by the harness to get him back in order, but the dog let out a low whine. Brutus wasn’t going anywhere until he got what he wanted: pets. And treats. Lots of treats.

Alistair threw his head back with a groan, a bit melodramatic. “Brutus, you’re killing me. We’re halfway to home.” For his part, Alistair harbored no intentions of controlling the woman again. Hell, he’d hated doing it once. “Brutus, please.” The redhead begged his dog, who remained an immovable object. “Right, then.” Alistair dropped the harness from his hand and crossed his arms across his chest. “Guess I’m stuck here.”

New Years had been… Well, at the very least Zofia had thought it was nice to salute the past year with her middle finger and send it off straight to hell with whatever drinks and dancing Dance Macabre would provide her with, and whatever debauchery she could find in the arms of others in the wee hours of the new year. Now that the revelries of the past evening were in the rear view,  it was… quiet. A peaceful silence that Zofia found herself uneasy in. There was a clean slate of a year ahead of her. A clean slate where things could finally begin to look up. Or perhaps, the universe would decide she could still fall further to absolute rock bottom. 

She rubbed at her eyes, the previous night's makeup still smudged there as she walked back to the room. She wouldn’t call it home. Calling the room that Cassius had tucked away in his house for her felt wrong. She couldn’t explain why, exactly. Only that Zofia felt like it tasted like a lie. Bare feet softly padding along on the chilly concrete of the sidewalk, the vampire walked along with her heels in hand. Then she heard raised voices and stumbling. 

Zofia tensed, eyes whipping around to find the source, to assess the threat- only to see the same sweet creature from weeks before ambling toward her, heedless of the necromancer he dragged along behind him. A tight smile crossed her lips as she took half a step back, prepared to flee into the night and get as far from the would-be puppet master as she could. But if she did that, Brutus would likely tangle the man in his leads, and literally drag him after the escaping vampire. She sighed, what little remained of her conscience telling her to stay put, and let the dog say hello. 

“Apologies.” She muttered, noticing the way he tensed upon realizing who his guide had brought him to. Zofia let her hand hang down in front of the dog, hoping he’d catch her scent and be satisfied, and the pair could go on their way far, far away from her. 

But Brutus sat firmly on the sidewalk, unwilling to follow instructions until he got what he wanted. The vampire sighed, stopping further to scratch the dog between his ears. “You shouldn’t come to play when you’re on the clock, kochanie, you know better.” Zofia said to the gentle beast. Her eyes shifted to the man, trying to assess if he’d trap her for the offense. “How do I get him to let you leave?”

———

Alistair gave a crooked smile as the dog wagged his tail, whacking it against his leg. “Nothing to apologize for.” He shot back, shaking his head. If anyone should be apologizing, it should be him. “Listen, I…” He trailed off, realizing she probably didn’t want to hear it. Still, it would at least get it off of his chest. “Having you around, my magic instinct felt like it was poised to go off at any moment on you. I didn’t want that.” He frowned, realizing that explaining himself was a hell of a lot harder than he thought it would be. 

“Having you leave was the only thing keeping you safe from me.” He finally said, eyes falling downward as he realized what a danger he really posed to Zofia. “As for how to get him to go back into work mode, I really don’t know.” Alistair admitted, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “He hasn’t done this before.” He further explained. Attempting to tug on Brutus’s harness to no avail. 

“I think he just likes you that much.” He surmised with a shrug of his shoulders, hand rubbing his chin. “You can try and leave, but I can’t promise he won’t follow you like a baby duckling.” Alistair let out a tired sigh, not liking the idea of being stranded in place because his dog decided to go rogue. “How many treats did you feed him, anyway?” He then asked, brow raised in suspicion. “He’s acting like you hung the moon.”

_

She stood unnaturally still as he started to speak. There was no giant circle of carefully crafted spell work ready to ensnare her on the street. Zofia knew better than to think herself safe. Her skin prickled with the memory of invisible strings ensnaring her, pulling her back. Trapping her. 

But it was an apology. Coiled muscles slowly relaxed as she studied him. Was this part of some game? Some ploy to lull her into security again? Brutus grinned a silly dog smile up at her. That didn’t seem to be the case, based on the pups reaction to her. 

“And does that make me safe now?” The vampire asked, still prepared to run. Zofia couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t lie, but she hoped she could tell. She could at least believe that the working dog didn’t make it a habit to drag the man across streets to greet random people. 

“If he follows me like a duckling, he’ll drag you into the street,” Zofia sighed, crouching to pet Brutus. She pressed a kiss to the dogs nose, which earned her a lick on the cheek. She let out a soft snort of laughter. “You are supposed to be working, kochanie.” The dog snuffled at her pockets in response, hearing his owner mention treats. “Not that many… he wasn’t working when I gave them to him.”

———-

The necromancer held up his hands in the air, no tricks or hidden things up his sleeves. “I promise you’re safe.” Alistair spoke, knowing that for some, those words held weight. He never spoke them lightly. Brutus gave a soft huff as the two spoke, satisfied with the kiss he received to his nose. There was something teething Alistair in place that he couldn’t quite name. Something he was afraid to address. 

The truth was, Alistair could easily get Brutus to listen to his command. All he needed to do was speak in Scottish Gaelic and the dog would obey. But for whatever reason, he’d decided not to. “Well clearly he’d rather belong to you,” he huffed as he ran a hand through his red locks. “Would you like me to walk home without eyes?” He asked Brutus, who was content to lay in between the two. 

The dog only licked Zofia’s hands in response, which caused the redhead to throw his hands up in the air after removing the glasses from his face, revealing the burn scar that covered his face. She’d already seen it once, there was no reason to hide it again. “I don’t make a habit of controlling undead that have a mind of their own.” He began to say, knowing he had to explain himself. “But you were killing that man, and I panicked. I was scared that if I interfered without it, you’d go for me next.” The amber eyes darted about, not knowing where to focus their unseeing gaze. 

“Then you stepped into that circle, and I felt the control beginning to take its hold. I had to push you away. You weren’t safe.” Alistair bowed his head, eyes drifting to the ground beneath his feet. “I understand if you cannot trust me anymore. I wouldn’t trust me either. Nothing good comes from necromancy, trust me.” The latter half of his statement was more of a whisper of shame, he hated who he was. He hated that of all the areas of magic, he’d been forced into the one that controls the dead. He was no better than a monster himself. Realizing himself, Alistair threw his glasses back onto his face, the scar fading away. 

_

He promised. She wanted to take him at his word. She really did. Zofia kept one eye on his hands, trying to track any movements and if they meant anything. Brutus seemed to trust her, at least. And the dog was easy to trust in kind. Animals were simple creatures to understand. Their motivations were clear. Kindness and food and comfort and safety. That was all they looked for. She could respect that- relate to that. Even if she didn’t trust as easy as the dog did. 

A soft huff of laughter rumbled in her throat as Brutus licked her in response to Alistair’s question. Zofia tried to give the dog a disapproving frown, but the corner of her mouth drew up in a small smile. The smile faded quickly as Alistair resumed talking. “I thought he was someone else.” Her voice was cold, devoid of expression. She tugged her coat tighter across her shoulders. “What would have happened to me, if you hadn’t let me leave?”

_______

Thinking about her question for a long moment, Alistair frowned. “I’m not a hunter.” He answered simply. “I would have taken the man away from you and made a run for it.” It was the truth, he realized with a deep frown. “I’m in the business of helping people as much as I can. Not hurt more than I need to. Leave that to the professional idiots that hurt people for money and because they have a ‘calling.’” 

Alistair didn’t think much of hunters. He didn’t think much of anyone, if he was honest. He only thought of those who needed healing and those who were past redemption. He found that most people weren’t past redemption. Zofia wasn’t. Once, the person who needed healing brought in their own sacrifice. It presented a lot of questions, but in the end, they’d paid him a lot to keep him quiet. So he’d done it. Having Melody with him made things easier. She wiped the minds of victims and clients alike. 

“Brutus, I think Zofia would appreciate it if we left her alone.” Alistair said to his dog, who simply groaned and rolled onto his side. “Are you serious?” He spoke to his dog as he realized Brutus only got more comfortable. “Fine. Be that way.” Alistair waved a dismissive hand at his dog before taking a careful step forward. 

_

“Professional idiots is putting it politely,” the vampire rubbed at her wrists absently. It had been months, but she still felt the ghost of her restraints there. “I took him to the hospital.” Zofia didn’t know what had happened to the man afterward. She hoped he had survived. He hadn’t deserved the fate that she’d reserved for those who had done her wrong. 

Alistair attempted to get Brutus to go, but the dog seemed far too content with Zofia. She kept her hands away from the dog who snuggled up to her, hoping he’d decide to go back to work. He only cozied further up to the vampire, who watched as the necromancer attempted to find his way home without a guide. 

Zofia frowned, clucking her tongue at Brutus, and pointed at Alistair. The dog had the good sense to look remorseful, but still was reluctant to rise. Zofia sighed and quietly walked toward the man, watching as Brutus followed her. She scooped up his lead, and placed it silently back into Alistair’s hand. 

———

“Yes, you did. You proved me wrong, which I’m glad for.” Alistair responded with a nod of his head. “I’ve worked with slayers in the past. Some of them have their head on straight, some of them are overzealous killers with a bloodlust for people that just aren’t as human as they’d like.” He crossed his arms over his chest, clearly he was overall indifferent to hunters and monsters and the fighting that went on between them. “When it comes to who I take, I take those who don’t have redeeming qualities. I usually get them from monsters and hunters alike.” 

Alistair paused for a moment, then let out a tired sigh. “Aidan Gallagher. He sustained severe bloodloss but managed to pull through.” He was silent again, then shook his head. “I checked for you.” He then added, realizing he should probably explain why he knew that information. “Don’t ask my sources, I won’t give them.”

As soon as Zofia began to move, Brutus groaned as he got up and began to trot along side her, but swiftly sat down again the second she stopped walking and Alistair continued. This caused the redhead to stop in his tracks after being kept firmly in place by the harness lead that had been placed into his hand. “Oh fer feck’s sake…” the necromancer grumbled out, finally having enough of his dog’s misbehavior. “Brutus. Leighis.” He commanded with a frown. 

Brutus’s ears quickly swiveled at the command, and the dog begrudgingly followed the command. “Oh, stop your whining.” Alistair complained to the dog, who began to lead him in a circle, back directly in front of Zofia. “He’s led me right to you, hasn’t he?” Alistair asked with a raised brow. “Well. Seems like he’s dead set on making sure we be stuck together. I don’t think he’ll let you out of his sight, quite frankly.” Alistair narrowed his eyes, looking down to the ground. “You wouldn’t happen to want a dog, would you?” He asked, giving a threatening gaze in the direction of Brutus’s panting.

She nodded. Zofia could respect that. She could respect a moral code. She had been trying to implement one for herself with her new habits. If she was going to feed directly from the source, she found it easier to reconcile with sinking her teeth into those who were at the very least assholes. It was easier to forgive herself if the people she fed off of could stand to be knocked down a few pegs. And I’m doing so, she could try and make the world a little bit better, as penance for the unhinged monster she’d been those first few weeks, that beast that still lurked in the corners of her mind. 

She stood as still as the grace at the sound of an unfamiliar name. She’d never heard of Aidan Gallagher before that moment, but Zofia knew exactly who he was. The woman let out a long hiss of a breath that she’d been holding since she’d realized what she’d done that night in the alley. “If I’d,” she began, pausing as she contemplated her words. “If he hadn’t pulled through, would you have come after me?” By his own set of rules, he should have. Alistair should say ‘yes, if he died, then you killed him, and you’d be fair game.’ “I won’t hold it against you, if the answer is yes.” 

She watched, trying to stifle quiet laughter as the dog utterly rejected his duties and merely walked Alistair in a large circle, before Brutus sat right back down in front of Zofia. The dog looked up at her happily as though to say ‘Look, I’m back! It’s time to give me a treat!’ She tried to force her expression back into its usual, carefully neutral expression, but the dog’s tongue lolled out of his mouth as he grinned up at her goofily. “I think if he was stuck with me, he’d hate it fairly quickly. I can’t play outside during the day when all the other dogs are out” 

It was abundantly clear, though, that Brutus was not leaving without Zofia. The vampire sighed, shaking her head. “I could walk with you, just until you get back to your flat. I think if you’re home and I disappear, he’ll forget about me quick enough. Especially if you give him one of those peanut butter biscuits.”

——————-

Zofia asked a good question, but Alistair knew his answer immediately. “No. I wouldn’t.” He was genuine, and his eyes looked directly at her, though they looked more through her than at her. “I know your story. I know that there’s a person in there that fights for freedom. The people I take, they’re not like that.” He dropped Brutus’s lead again, letting the dog snuggle into her side. “The people I take have no humanity left in them. They’re past redemption. You’re not past redemption. You’re scared and trying to survive. I don’t need to have eyes to see that.” He didn’t know why he was being so honest with her, why he felt a vulnerability with her. It was stupid, is what it was. 

Alistair sighed, then nodded his head. “Yeah, fine. Walk with me.” He gestured for hand, knowing that she would be a far better lead than Brutus was being. “He’s usually so good. Maybe he sees you and forgets himself. The whole world doesn’t matter.” He let out a wistful sigh and took hold of Brutus’s lead, who began walking the second that he knew that Zofia was coming with. 

They walked in silence for a few minutes before he spoke up again. “I really am sorry.” He spoke, his words cutting through the tense silence with a knife. “You have every right to be terrified of me. I could fully control you. But I don’t want to. I’m not… my family. They would control you. I’ve always been the black sheep in that regard. I hate it. I hate that I’m good at it.”

_

A soft laugh escaped her as the dog shrugged off his duties once more to cozy up to her. It made the words less jarring when she thought about them. She wasn’t past redemption yet. A day would come when humanity would slip like smoke between her fingers, and she’d be more beast than anything else. That day hadn’t come yet. She was still herself, still Zofia, no matter how changed that woman was to past iterations of herself. 

She looked down at the hand he extended to her. Recent history told her not to accept it. She shouldn’t let anything that could have power over her close enough to have a conversation, much less close enough to touch. But the New Year's celebrations had been a swath of bad decisions on Zofia’s part. Drinks, and kissing people she’d met moments before, and finding herself in the bed of a perfect stranger who could have easily been a threat to her. Holding a necromancer’s hand as she guided him home seemed relatively innocent compared to those choices. She hesitantly slipped her hand in his. 

She snorted, stooping to scratch the dog’s head. “I used to have that effect on people, but I’m certain it’s the first time I’ve had a dog enamored with me.” She continued on in silence, following the path she vaguely recalled to his apartment. Zofia mulled the words over. “You’re hardly the most frightening thing I’ve encountered.” She decided, choosing not to elaborate further. “You have a conscience. Not everyone does.”

———-

A smile broke across Alistair’s face at being told he wasn’t frightening. “I don’t know, my face is pretty terrifying.” He retorted with a soft chuckle. “My conscience is the reason I’m not controlling an army of the dead.” He wrinkled his nose at the idea, then shook his head. “Like what would I even do with that many dead people? What am I waging war against?” He rolled his eyes as they walked hand in hand, finding it easy to trust that she was leading him to the correct destination. 

Brutus was watching the pair as he walked alongside Alistair, almost as if he were trying to decipher a puzzle he didn’t quite understand. “Do anything fun for New Year’s Eve?” He asked to fill the silence. “More fun than playing Monopoly with a 12 year old? And letting said 12 year old kick your ass with the dog?” He wiggled his brows as he turned his head in her direction.  

__

She snorted a laugh at his comment about his own appearance . “You really must be blind if you think that’s true.” Zofia thought a moment as they strolled along. “I’m not certain exactly. You would probably be well prepared for a history themed trivia night with an army of undead at your disposal.” The vampire quipped with a wry smile. 

The smile turned to a smirk at his questions of how she’d spent her New Year’s. They’d been fun enough, she thought. There definitely would have been worse things to do to ring in the New Year. “Just went out and pretended I was alive with some of my very dear, closest people I have never met before and will likely never see again. Revelries extended through the day.” Her eyebrow ticked up. “How badly did you lose?”

——-

The necromancer scoffed at her comment, acting affronted. “You doubted my blindness for a second? For shame.” Alistair admonished the woman by swatting her arm before taking her hand again. He then thought of the idea of a team entirely comprised of undead from different periods of history. “You know, you could be onto something there. But I think you should make the trivia team, not me. I think most undead would run at the sight of me.”

Alistair smirked at the idea of going about celebrating New Year’s eve in such a way. “You know, I did that a lot in my younger years.” He told her with a soft chuckle. “When you’re single and eternally youthful, you might as well, right?” He shrugged his shoulder at her question. “Well the little bastard cheated, so of course, I went bankrupt.” He told her with a wink. “Nah, I let ‘im win. Didn’t buy any of the properties I should have. Let him have it.” 

As they walked into Oldtown, Alistair became familiar with the sounds, even in the middle of the night. “You want to come up?” He asked before he could realize what he was asking. “I mean, if you want to.” He cleared his throat, letting go of her hand as he made for the door of his apartment. “No pressure.”

“I’d be horrible on a historical trivia team.” She laughed. “I lived it, and I probably could do about as well as your run of the mill university student taking a history class as a gen ed.” Zofia laughed. “Though I did have fun with it. Once on a dare I pretended to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia - back when absolutely everyone was convinced they’d found her… poor thing.”

She made a noise in feigned offense and rolled her eyes. “A lady never kisses and tells.” The vampire reached down to pet Brutus once again, as though he would come to her defense. “But I do agree. Always have. Perks of being young and newly dead with a bunch of open minded French vampires who are far older than you ever thought possible.” Enjoy life for all it has to offer you. The voice whispered to her on the wind, and she shivered, pulling her coat tighter against her to shield from the memories of those she’d lost. 

Zofia raised an eyebrow. “You’re inviting me up for a night cap?” She was keenly aware of what had happened the last time she entered that apartment. She hesitated to do so again. But the necromancer seemed different this time, and she’d be lying to say she wasn’t intrigued. 

——-

“You’d be better at it than me, and that’s what counts.” Alistair quipped back with a nod of his head. “I wasn’t exactly schooled in traditional things. Parents were more concerned about making sure my siblings and myself were the best of the best at everything. Extreme homeschooling with a dash of actual fun.” He made a face at the memory. Gods, his parents were awful. “Some people shouldn’t be parents,” Alistair spoke sourly.

As she questioned him, Alistair decided that was absolutely fair of her. “I guess I did.” He replied as he pulled a face. “Is that a bad thing? You don’t have to. I understand if you didn’t want to.” He shrugged his shoulder as Brutus sat at the door to the elevator. “Though if I’m honest, I don’t think he will let me get up there without you. Seriously, you sure you don’t want a dog?” He raised his brows, pointing down at Brutus, who was whining. “Honestly, it’s like you’re the best thing that ever happened to him,” Alistair complained as he abandoned his dog and made for the elevator. “You feed a guy for three years, and suddenly, he turns his sights on the pretty woman that enters his home. Unbelievable.”

Zofia paused, thinking about it. Was it a bad idea? Most likely. Especially since there was a giant magical circle that could spell out her certain doom hiding beneath his living room carpet. Or at least that was what she assumed the spell did. She was quite certain she did not want to find out. 

But the lingering sentiment of fuck it, it’s a new year danced around her mind. So what if the end of the last year had been horrifically, devastatingly bad. This one was off to a riot of a start. “Well he would be the only one to consider me that.” Zofia patted her leg in a motion for the dog to follow her. “He’s your dog. I don’t think he’d really enjoy life with me, anyhow.”

———

As they entered the elevator, Alistair smirked and pressed the button for his floor. “Nonsense,” he responded with a wave of his hand. “You party and go out and find a bite to eat, you give good treats. What’s not to love?” He reached down and ruffled Brutus’s head. “Isn’t that right?” He told his dog sweetly, earning a tail wag that whacked against Zofia’s leg. “That’s what I thought.”

He fished the keys out of his pocket and inserted them into the lock, then opened the door to his apartment. “Make yourself at home,” Alistair told her before removing Brutus from his harness and putting it on the wall hook. Brutus, for his part, continued to look up at Zofia with his wide brown eyes, waiting for her to walk into the apartment and not back out his life. Curious, Alistair glanced through his eyes and then rolled his own in reaction to seeing that his dog was staring up at Zofia like she hung the moon. 

“She’s not going anywhere for a second, you big softie.” Alistair groaned to his dog as he headed for the makeshift bar he kept on the side of the room. “What can I interest you in?” He asked, pointing to his array. It wasn’t much, but there were a few whiskeys and bottles of red wines.

Zofia snorted, shaking her head. “The ‘bite to eat’ would be the complaining party.” Brutus’s wagging tail seemed to dismiss the argument, making it abundantly clear that the dog cared only for the vampires ability to give him treats and head scritches.

She clung to the edges of the room. She didn’t want to get any closer than she had to to the carpet she knew hid the spell circle. Zofia dropped down into a squat to be on the same level as Brutus. “Now, you have to be a good boy and listen to him. Or I won’t visit. Or bring you treats.” She scolded, stroking the dog’s nose. “He depends on you. You can’t follow me around, even if it’s very cute.” 

She glanced to where Alistair had gone, her eyes flickering over his assortment of bottles. “Whatever you’re having sounds good.”

———-

Pulling out two short glasses, Alistair poured whiskey into them and then picked one up and held it out in front of him. “Here,” he spoke to the woman who was clearly occupied with admonishing his guide dog in the most unscolding tone the spellcaster had ever heard. “I dunnae think that tone of voice’ll get through to him.” Alistair remarked before picking up his own glass and taking a drink from it. 

“So how's it been? Keeping out of trouble?” He asked, free hand crossed across his chest. “Reindeer break into your dwelling space yet?” He took another sip, thinking to the chaos that was unfolding on the streets. At least it wasn’t all goo anymore, however. 

Alistair snapped a finger, then pointed in the direction of Brutus’s dog bed. “Theirig dha do leabaidh,” the man commanded with raised brows, which caused the dog to let out a soft huff before tromping toward his bed with a wagging tail. “That’ll teach you to misbehave,” he grumped with a roll of his eyes. 

_

“It’s not my fault he’s sweet. I can’t yell at him. People are much easier to yell at.” She said, moving to take the glass of whiskey from him. Zofia took a sip, letting the liquor burn down her throat. 

“I’ve not eaten anyone, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Zofia sighed, tapping a nail against the lip of her glass. “And no, not to my knowledge. But I’m hardly there anyhow, so perhaps a reindeer has moved in in my absence. Is that a common issue people are having? Reindeer trespassing?”

She watched Brutus walk away to his bed with a begrudging huff. “What did you say to him. The poor thing looks offended.” She laughed as the dog stared across the room, forlorn. 

_______

Alistair took the sunglasses off and rolled his eyes. “Hm,” he hummed in response. “Sweet until he’s faced with something that pisses him off. Like walking away from you without trouble, apparently.” He finished the glass and put it down into the bar cart before walking over to the couch and sitting down. 

“Hmph. I don’t care what you do with your dietary needs.” Alistair waved a hand dismissively, crossing a leg over the other, leaning into the cushions. “Yeah, reindeer everywhere. Luckily none came to the shop yet, but they aren’t leaving so there’s always time.” He raised his brows and widened his eyes. It was only a matter of time from the way he saw things. 

“I told him to go to bed!” He responded with a laugh. “He misbehaves, he gets sent to bed. He knows the rules.” He sat there for a moment before smirking. “Isn’t that right, Bruce?” He called out to the dog, which earned a sharp bark in response. “See? He knows.”

_

“Sorry Brutus, I don’t think you can keep me,” she called to the dog from her spot, leaning back against the door frame. She huffed, rolling her eyes. She didn’t quite buy that line. “No? Your shiny spell circle under the carpet says otherwise.” Zofia understood she was a threat. Even if she had no real fighting training, she was still strong. Still willing to fight like a caged animal if she needed to. He needed his fancy spells to ensure she didn’t decide she liked the idea of him bloodless better. 

“Maybe the fact that you have a dog is deterrent enough for the reindeer. Maybe Brutus has them spooked.” She shrugged, taking another sip of the whiskey. “And I think he was rather well behaved for going to his bed. Maybe if you gave him a treat for doing so, he’d stop following me about.”

——-

The spellcaster slunk into his seat a bit more, shrugging his shoulders. “I care when you kill people without realizing it. That’s when I intervene.” Alistair tapped the spell circle with his foot. “Doesn’t work without me putting things down and doing magic. Just a symbol on the ground right now. You’re perfectly fine.” He let his gaze look in the direction of the woman’s voice. “Besides, I’m not in the mood or capacity to cast any spells. A bitch is tired.” He nodded his head, as if that were going to dispel the fear that burrowed in the vampire. 

“Oh yeah, nothing screams scary quite like Brutus.” Alistair muttered with a roll of his eyes. “He doesn’t get a treat for every basic task or else he expects it. Besides, he gets a big treat each night before I fuck off to bed. He’ll get one later.” He shrugged a shoulder, leaning onto the armrest of the sofa. “Maybe he wants you to be his new owner.” He turned over his shoulder. “Oi! Ye wan’ a new partner?” He asked Brutus who simply tilted his head in curiosity. 

Alistair turned his head back forward. “If you’re uncomfortable, you can leave at any time. I’m not keeping you here.” He felt the need to let her know that he wasn’t a danger. He hated that his existence set off alarm bells for people. Not just undead, but the living as well. He was a necromancer, he went against the natural order of things. “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve scared someone off,” he muttered under his breath. 

_

Zofia sucked on her teeth, looking down at her hands. He may have had a point. For all the people she’d drank from, all the blood she’d spilt since coming home to Wicked’s Rest, mistaking a man for someone he wasn’t sat the worst with her. The gnawing guilt was slightly eased with the knowledge that the man had survived the night. 

Her mouth ticked ever so slightly at the way he decided to describe his being tired. She stepped away from the wall, still giving herself more than enough room for an easy out. “I still say he’d hate the living arrangements with me. He’d have to be nocturnal.”

Her eyes flickered back to the door, to the window. To each exit she’d seen and evaluated the speed that she could get to them at. “Please, don’t take it personally,” she said quietly. “I cannot think of many people I don’t look for exit strategies around. Regardless of whether or not they have the power to control me.”

—————

Alistair sat with the information for a long moment, letting the silence fester. “Always looking for an escape sounds… exhausting.” He spoke quietly, his gaze looking straight ahead of him. “I’m sorry that you feel the need to live life that way. You deserve better.” Usually he didn’t concern himself with people’s problems. Usually, he looked the other way. So why was she different all of a sudden? The question gnawed at the threads of his consciousness. 

“I swear I’ll never do it again.” Alistair spoke, head turning toward her. “I swear that, unless you turn into an uncontrollable vampiric spawn, I will never use that power against you ever again.” He held up a hand, as if he were swearing an oath. “I know my words mean very little, but I mean the truth when I say it.” 

_

Zofia shrugged. She’d quickly grown accustomed to living looking over her shoulder. She figured it was better to be exhausted than to be caged again. Or worse. “It suits my needs for now.” Was all she said. 

She took one last sip of her whiskey before moving across the space to place the empty glass in his sink. The vampire walked back toward the door, studying him and his raised hand. “Well,” she sighed. “I will just have to hold you to it.” Zofia’s hand rested on the door knob. “So I can consider you a friend now? Or at the very least an acquaintance who won’t stab me unprovoked.”

______

Thinking about the idea of having a friend outside of Melody alarmed Alistair. Sure, he talked to people and formed connections, but assigning the word friend to it was dangerous. It opened him up to getting hurt later. He stayed silent for another moment before nodding his head once. 

“Friends.” He echoed with a crooked smile. “And if you’re ever in need of my services, you know where to find me.” He waved his arms around the apartment. “Let’s just hope you don’t need them.” He then added, frowning. The last thing he needed was someone he knew getting hurt. 

He heard the tug of the door knob, then smirked. “You’re free to go.” He told her, amused that she was so eager to flee. He couldn’t blame her. He’d controlled her once, after all. “And I don’t stab people. Not unless it’s ritualistic, of course.”

_

“Friends it is,” she said softly. “I don’t plan on needing your services anytime soon. I don’t have time to get hurt again.” It wasn’t a joke. Not really. But humor colored her voice anyway.  Her hand slipped onto the door handle, and she quietly turned the knob. Zofia glanced back at Alistair who seemed entertain by her exit plans. “Ah. Well… that’s comforting, I suppose.” She said, pulling the door open. “Happy New Year, Alistair… Bye Brutus.” The vampire called, before slipping out into the night.

[rn-zane]

@zofiawithaz replied to your post “To answer any future questions about my black eye...”:

[pm][user sends a photo of a gift card to the masque that would cover the cost of at least four red eyes extra red, and declines to add any other message.]

​[pm] You're back Hey, where did you Are you alright [...] Thank you. I'm really glad to hear from you again. [...] Don't suppose you'd let me use that gift card to share a cup with you? Catch up, maybe?

[sagescarlett]

[pm] Is this Sage? Cassius gave me your number.

[Pm][audiofile sent with the following message] This is her. Who are you?

[scavengedlegacy]

@zofiawithaz replied to your post “[User attaches a picture of a reindeer that is...”:

It’s hungry. Apparently apples aren’t the solution I thought they were. Try giving it celery.

​[User goes to give this a try. She gets bitten.] Celery is not the solution. He just bit me. [...] Do you know anyone who can repair a window? This thing isn't as cute now.

[raisareigns]

I've spent too many nights at the Circle lately. I'm down to go somewhere else if you've got perhaps a classier or more lowkey idea -- a better wine place.

I love the way you think. This is going to be marvelous. When and where?

[magmahearts]

WICKED'S REST as PERIOD DRAMA

( featuring: @raisareigns, @ironcladrhett, @zofiawithaz, @arustysnake, @ariadnewhitlock, & @lukas-dark-miracles )

[nightmaretist]

TIMING: Mid-December PARTIES: Zofia @zofiawithaz & Inge @nightmaretist LOCATION: Dance Macabre/the streets around said bar SUMMARY: Inge finds Zofia in the undead nightclub by accident and addresses her — the two string up a conversation and find common ground. CONTENT WARNINGS: None.

Dance Macabre always enveloped her with welcome arms, it seemed. Inge didn’t really wish to go out in any place else in this godforsaken town, as she kept finding herself looking over her shoulder. Here, though, her kind gathered and here, she was certain she could find some kind of sanctuary. Nothing perfect, nothing that didn’t make her wonder if perhaps she should be looking out for that Cortez, that Rhett, that Owen.

She was in a good mood, all things considered. The alcohol helped. As did the relative absence of Christmas decorations in this place. But she was still alert, at least somewhat, and when she passed by a woman introducing herself to another as Zofia she halted, turning on her heel. Inge took her in, this dark-haired beauty and went over all she knew.

A woman scorned, a woman maimed, a woman seemingly maddened — these were all grounds for her hard-to-gain sympathy. But then she had undone Cassius, hadn’t she? And so, her empathy ended before it could even properly begin. She mixed herself into the conversation with little hesitation, not having struggled with taking up space in at least a few decades. “So you’re the elusive Zofia,” she said, extending a hand when she’d like to raise it to smack the other like she’d smacked Cassius. “Ingeborg.” She was sure to squeeze tight and smile sweet. “Heard a lot about you.”

___

Zofia needed a fucking drink. 

She’d finally obtained some clothing that didn’t look as though it had taken a trip to hell and back and was also her own taste. She’d traded in the jeans and t shirt she’d been given by Alistair for some new finery the moment she’d had the means to do so. Donned in sheer black lace cut in a deep v down her chest, maroon pants, and red lipstick, she felt more herself than she had in an eternity. 

Sat at the bar, she kicked one leg over the other as she surveyed the space. No familiar faces. For the best, probably. She wasn’t sure she could deal with complicated reunions and questions of where she’d been. Or worse, running into those she’d already seen since she’d been back. 

She flicked her dark hair over her shoulder, downing the last of her drink. She felt a tap on her shoulder and a face she didn’t recognize asked if she was someone named ‘Jessica’. Did she look like a Jessica? “No. I’m Zofia. Sorry.” The stranger went on their way, and Zofia went back to her drink. 

Her name carried over the music from a voice she hadn’t heard before, and Zofia felt as though she’d been doused in ice water. She went still as a statue, fighting every urge to hastily dispatch whoever it was and get the fuck out of there. But that would cause a scene, and scenes were bad for people trying not to be hunted again. That and something about promising to try and better herself and then lashing out sat wrong with her. A fake smile gritted across her face, appearing more like the bared teeth of a wild animal. 

She turned, taking in the other woman, trying to assess if she was a threat or not. “I’m at a disadvantage, Ingeborg.” She took the woman’s hand, giving it a shake. “You seem to know me, but I don’t know you.” Her eyes narrowed. “So who sent you?”

_____

Was she a bad friend, for being intrigued by this elusive creature? Sofie, the person she’d only ever known as Cassius’ disappeared lover as he’d never introduced them. Zofia, the person who had left him crumbled upon her return. Were there other versions of her out there, just like she carried her past versions with her? Nika Beinhacker, Ingeborg Beenhakker-de Jong, Ivonne Coëme and now Inge Endeman, all different editions of the same person. Who was this Zofia and perhaps more pressingly, why was she?

And she did resent her, this vampire who had hurt someone she cared for. But another part was intrigued, the way she often was. In a way that went against better judgment, in a way that made her cross whatever boundaries she may have set for herself. Inge had never been a person of very strong principles. She followed her heart, and if not, she followed her desire for whimsy, inspiration and distraction. She wasn’t sure win what category the vampire fell, yet.

The other didn’t seem quite as charmed by her, as it turned out, and Inge was intrigued by this. She was quick to take the seat next to the vampire, settling easily as she crossed her legs and considered her drink options. That could come later, though.

“Oh, no, no. No one send me. I am not someone who is sent.” She gave a knowing smile, which hardly revealed anything. Perhaps she should try harder at not seeming like a hunter type, but the notion of her being anything like a hunter was so offensive to her that she hardly considered it. She turned her attention to the barkeep, ordering another round of, “Whatever she’s having, for the both of us.” 

Then, back to Zofia. Sophie. Sofieke. Whoever. “We have a mutual …” Inge thought for a moment, then shrugged, deciding against a label, “Cassius. I heard you went through quite an ordeal, but …” Tsk, her lips clicked together. “Have been causing a stir yourself. That’s all. I figured we should meet and hey, here you are.”

————-

She was pretty. About the same height as her, with big brown eyes and auburn hair. Zofia’s eyes flickered from feature to feature, looking for any clues as to what she was, and what she was up to. She had come to Dance Macabre, so there was a good chance the woman no longer had a pulse. Or she was a hunter who was running the risk of being caught for the sake of staking out a target. Literally. 

The stranger ordered another round, and a few moments later two dry vodka martinis with lemon twists floating on top were set before them. Good. The drink would make whatever this was about to be more tolerable. 

At the sound of an all too familiar name, Zofia took a lengthy sip of her drink. “I imagine whatever you heard of my ordeal is lacking in details.” Another lengthy sip as she started thinking of an exit strategy. There had to be other places to drink in this town where she wasn’t likely to get a stake in her chest. Or that didn’t have friends of Cassius lurking to confront her for her actions at their little reunion. 

Perhaps, on second thought, being staked would be preferable.

“So you are a friend of his?” She asked. It wouldn’t surprise her. Cassius, after all, was a good person. A kind person. A person who frequented all the same spots as her- how the hell was she going to find new places to go when only a handful of places were designed for undead clientele?!

__________

She gave a hum of approval at the drinks that appeared, taking her glass and taking a small sip. The vampire had good taste, that at least could be said. Inge could appreciate that. As for who she was and what she’d gone through and done subsequently — well, she hadn’t quite made up her mind. For all the love she had for Cassius, she did sometimes think his judgment to be rather poorly. (Which in Zofia’s case could be a blessing or a curse.)

Not that Zofia’s judgment seemed all that sound. Leaving bodies around for a past lover was admirable on a dramatic level, but otherwise a rather outrageous action. “Well, they do say every story has many sides. I’ve heard his.” Inge shrugged. “I am not opposed to hearing yours.”

And that was true. She had been in a position like this before, hadn’t she? Escaped from hunters, her mind frazzled and not quite her own. Looking over her shoulder. She was a solitary creature, one of little loyalties, but she did feel a kinship with her fellow undead — most especially when they had fallen into the claws of some cruel slayers. “What I do know is that hunters can do a number on you. Irregardless of whatever else.”

Inge nodded, circling the rim of her glass. “Yes. But like I said, he didn’t send me. It’s — well, pure coincidence.” She smiled, as if it was a lucky and happy accident. She considered rubbing in the other’s face that Cassius was properly heartbroken, but swallowed the words. 

———

The music changed in the club to something with a consistent pulsing beat. It made Zofia’s skin crawl. She lifted the glass in a half-salute before downing another sip, trying to chase the thoughts away. 

Her eyebrow raised over the lip of her martini glass as the other woman offered to listen to her story. “Are you asking out of morbid curiosity?” The music thumped on. Her eyes closed, her face screwing up in concentration as she tried to shove away the matching plink plink plink of leaky pipes in her mind. The tempo changed and the thoughts subsided. 

A sad smile settled on her face. So that was it. She sat back in her seat, her hackles no longer completely raised. “They certainly can.” She sighed. “Tell me, how old are you?” Zofia cocked her head to the side. How much had she experienced? How much running, how much fear? How much living had she done?

She hummed, unamused. It figured that the universe would have a warped sense of humor. Depositing friends of his directly into her path. “It’s a small world, after all.” Zofia glanced around the space, trying to determine who else might be a friend of Cassius’s, intent on coming over and reminding her of what she’d done just by announcing his name. “Care to take this conversation outside? It’s quieter.” And less of a chance of being overheard. And there were more routes for a quick escape.

———

Many things Inge did were out of morbid curiosity. She’d watched a zombie maul a man because of it, just as she’d entered Parker’s workshop because something within her needed to be satiated. But this wasn’t really one of these cases — whatever Zofia had done and gone through wasn’t bound to stir her to her core like a hunter’s place for torture, after all.

Maybe it was simple solidarity. She did think that important among her fellow undead and besides, she could not help but draw a parallel between what she’d heard about Zofia and what she herself had gone through. “No. Curiosity, yes. Morbid, no.” 

Some relief seemed to spread through the other which was a welcome sight. Inge didn’t mind people being distrustful of her, but she disliked it a little when it came to people like Zofia. Undead. “Almost eighty,” she said, knowing it could be relatively young by certain standards. “What about you?”

She nodded. “Exactly.” Never mind that Zofia had returned to Wicked’s Rest, rather than flee to another town — which is what Inge would have done, in her shoes. Always running, barely ever returning in case of what if. She considered the other’s proposition. “What do you suggest? An alley, in stead?” That wasn’t particularly safe, either. “A quieter place would do, though. We could go for a walk?” 

________

Zofia could respect curiosity. A little. She thought. But what good had sharing the little details of her life done for her in the past? Gotten her friends? Maybe so. But where had those friends been when she’d needed them? She took another long sip of her drink. 

Almost eighty. The ‘almost’ drew a smile from the vampire. It reminded her of when little children insisted they were almost the age they’d be in eleven months, which meant they were practically a grown up. Of course, almost eighty was long past childhood. Long enough to experience, long enough to grieve, to love, to mourn, to hurt… But still young. It was closer to childhood than Zofia had been in a long, long time. “Three hundred fourteen. Three hundred fifteen in the new year.” 

Taking one last sip of her drink, she set some money down on the bar before sliding off her chair. “A walk sounds good.” Moving was good. Moving meant if she was being followed she would notice sooner rather than later. She slipped her coat on, wrapping herself in the burgundy wool, even if the cold night air wouldn’t really bother her. She extended her arm for the other old woman to link her arm through before heading out the door. “I’m sure you have questions.” She sighed, glancing back at the other woman. “Will you ask them now, or shall I start at the beginning?”

_______

Oh, she was old. Properly old. Inge felt a tinge of inferiority spread through, almost wished she had lied about her age — seventy seven was still just a human age, one that people lived to with some back pain and complaint but generally little issue. But being over three centuries old, now that was an accomplishment.

But she swallowed her insecurity and gave a look that did reveal her being impressed, “Good job on sticking around for so long.” Not everyone managed, did they? She’d known undead like them to lose their minds in their immortality. Though that might be a kinder fate than having your head chopped off. She thought of Sanne, how there had been a small moment of her head falling before she’d turned into dust. 

She threw down some money as well, still wanting to pay for the round she’d ordered on proud principle and wrapped her own body in her leather trenchcoat. She’d gotten it in the nineties. Inge stared at the arm offered to her, bemused and surprised by this move, and took it. If it was a challenge, she’d meet it. If it wasn’t, then she wasn’t sure what it was. Once the night air greeted them, it seemed the conversation was bound to properly start. “I’d rather you tell it however you want. I know speaking of such matters isn’t always the most … easy.” She certainly did not talk of the ways hunters haunted her, still. “Speak, if you’re fine with that. If you’d rather have questions, sure. Start with what happened.”

________

Zofia snorted. “It goes by in a blink.” She’d heard it said so many times over the years, from people with white hair that spilled around faces with lines and wrinkles. People with eyes that spoke of a wealth of human joys and sorrows. She wondered what her eyes spoke of. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know anymore.

Ingeborg linked her arm in Zofia’s, and the vampire led on. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer, she sang over and over in her thoughts. She didn’t know if she had friends any longer. It was safer to keep everyone so very very close. The closest of enemies, so that she could see the cogs tick in their minds, so she could figure out the trap before it snapped shut with her inside. 

She sucked the cold night air in, embracing the chill. “It’s a story that started some time ago.” Zofia said simply. “You would have been a young thing. Maybe in your twenties. I had a family. A family that I chose, and for hundreds of years a family that continued to choose me. And god, did we live.” A wistful smile stole at her features, only to be swept away as the story continued. “Someone plucked them all away from me. Dead. Missing. Who’s to say, really. I never saw them again, and I gave up hope that they’d ever turn up a long time ago.” 

“And then I started to rebuild. Let myself enjoy life again. Enjoy love. And…” She cut herself off, her eyes darting toward an alley at the sound of a crunch. She watched, waiting for the trap to spring to life. A rat skittered out of a dumpster with some papers in its little mouth, squeaking as it scampered away with its prize. She continued walking.

“It was dark there. You’d think I wouldn’t mind the dark, since I can’t enjoy the sun anymore. You’d think it would have been a wonderful little respite. But it’s never been fully dark out here. I’ve always had the stars… the moon…” Zofia looked up at the distant, twinkling lights. A reminder that she had found a way out. “A dark, small room. A bunker, really. In the ground, deep down, below some old cabin in the woods. Probably long since forgotten by everyone in this damned town, except  for the monsters who hunt things like us.”

“They were looking for information.” She continued, not wanting to live in the details for any longer than what was necessary. “They used all the tricks of their trade. All the things they knew could hurt, to try and figure out where the members of my clan, my family, had hidden themselves away. I was the easiest to find. The easiest to catch. The weakest remaining link. And they tried so very hard to break me.” Her voice wobbled. She stopped talking for a few minutes, refusing to cry in front of a stranger, especially one who’s knowledge of Zofia consisted of information gained from a love story that had ended spectacularly badly. “They succeeded. Just not in the way they were hoping.” 

She couldn’t always see them. Couldn’t always hear them. But she knew they followed. The ghosts that had visited her. Haunted her. Watched her, unable or unwilling to help. She could see them now. Lurking just at the corner of her vision. Still not helping. Still not quite comforting. Simply watching. Waiting. Zofia fixed her gaze on the woman who’s presence she’d proven to herself was real when she’d taken her arm. “What questions do you have.”

__________

“So they say,” Inge said. And she supposed on one hand life had flown by. How many years had it been since her daughter had died? Since Sanne? Since she had died? It all still felt like something that had happened not much longer than a few weeks ago while simultaneously feeling like a lifetime ago. Decades stretched, decades melted together. Time was an incomprehensible thing, both in dreams and in real life. 

As the other started speaking she moved with her in tandem. She had always envied the vampires and their clans, those houses and families that stayed together forever. She’d had Sanne once, her former nightmare and for a while current dream — but it hadn’t been the same. She was glad for her nature, did not envy those that had to drink blood to survive (boring, compared to the nightmares) but mares were often so solitary. Even if named after animals that moved in packs.

But what good where these micro-societies when hunters could rip them apart? It meant there was more to lose, more to leverage against you. Inge did not envy Zofia any more in that regard. The losses she’d suffered had ruined her enough, she figured.

She let her talk, resisting the urge to interject or let out an expletive, but her expression was one of empathy. Slayers were a cruel kind. Never able to simply kill, it seemed. Taking advantage of the undying bodies of their prey that could be maimed endlessly. She needn’t ask what had happened. She remembered Italy. She remembered Switzerland. She remembered Wicked’s Rest.

The story wrapped with a request for questions, as if Zofia was one of her students presenting a piece of art. Inge looked at her inquisitively. Her eyes were red. She should don her sunglasses. “First off, I am sorry that some people felt entitled to ruining your family. That they thought — that there was some righteousness there, that it was their right to. They’ve taken from me too.” Sanne’s head toppled from her neck and turned into dust before it could hit the ground. She blinked up at the stars. “And I am sorry they did this to you. It is an ugly delusion, that they think they can. That they think —” She shook her head. “It makes them better than us. I’ve always figured it makes them worse.” At least vampires healed fast, she figured. At least there was that blessing. In this area she envied her blood-drinking kin, too. 

“Did they survive you, in the end?” That was most important. “Are they after you, still?” That mattered to her personally, too. More slayers was never a good thing, especially not in this damned town. “And … what is it you’re after?”

__________

Zofia knew what pity felt like. It was cloying and smothering and altogether intolerable. This wasn’t pity. This was understanding. She didn’t cringe away from the red eyes as they studied her.  Whatever Ingeborg had been through in her life, it was enough to compare to the last half century of her own life. Steely eyes shifted to a red that matched Inge’s, and Zofia met the younger woman’s gaze. 

“I’m sorry for whatever cruelties you’ve endured at their hands.” She wasn’t used to this understanding. It wasn’t uncomfortable, thankfully. It was bolstering. It made her feel as though she could reforge the broken bits of her with damascus steel, remake herself into something that would not be torn asunder again. They both could. 

“Only one was there when I got out.” A dark smile drew up the corners of her mouth as a memory of lullabies and the metallic scent of fresh blood drifted through her mind. “I wish I could say he got what he deserved, but I didn’t have time for that. He’s burning in hell, all the same.”

The smile fell as another face drifted through her mind. “The one in charge wasn’t home. He’s still out there. And the other one probably had friends.” Zofia took a moment, mulling over the final question. “Everything they took from me. Security. Family. Peace. And I won’t have any of those things until I see the life fade from their eyes. Is that too much to ask for?”

———

She supposed that was an acceptable way of putting it. Having endured cruelties at their hands. Inge refused the title of victim. It was not one she would don, not for Hendrik, nor Sanne and certainly not a handful of hunters. But she had endured cruelties at all their hands. Endured, being the key word, cruelty being the condemnation of the other party. To have gone through it made them stronger. To have doled it out made the perpetrators worse than them. (Still – she didn’t quite think her ex-husband or creator perpetrators. She preferred not to think of them at all.) 

“It’s okay,” she said resolutely. “I will outlive them all, in the end. And so will you.” Those slayers, with their petty lifespans and their even pettier lives … most of them didn’t make it that far in life. “Let every scar we bear remind us of what we’ve managed to survive, hm?” This unlife was to be a celebration.

Zofia had killed one of her tormentors. That was good, Inge thought. A closure of sorts. She wondered if the vampire was vengeful enough to after the rest of them. “Good. Let him burn there forever.” She wondered for a moment how the other murdered. Was it all vampiric fangs and bloodshed? She carried herself with grace now, but perhaps she was more brutal out there. 

She halted, looking at the vampire. “I understand.” Did she? She ran from her tormentors. She ran from town to town, finding no security, no peace, no family. But art — there was always new art. “It is an understandable approach. They deserve nothing less.” Inge wasn’t going to offer her assistance. She barely went after the slayers she encountered. Worse, she’d recently bought one a drink and fucked another. “You deserve nothing less.” 

But. There was a but. She let it dangle in the air for a moment before grabbing it. “But, Cassius. Can you leave him be? I know — well, I don’t, not fully. But whatever transpired, it must ache.” Sanne’s head toppled from her neck. A lost lover could make one quite lost. “I suggest you do if you want those things in this town. Security. Peace.” Inge shrugged. “Perhaps even family.”

———

“That we will.” She certainly planned to outlive hers. It would be easy, since she didn’t plan to rest much until they were incapable of doing harm to her or anyone else again. Though Zofia supposed it would be easier when the scars weren’t still open wounds on her soul. It would be easier when every noise and shadow wasn’t another threat. If that day ever came. 

A dark smile danced across her features for a moment. It was a memory that gave her comfort. One gone. She managed to avenge the lives of those she’d lost and herself, even just a little. 

She paused in their walk, the humor that had momentarily flickered in her eyes all but snuffed out at the reminder of who she was there on behalf of. Even if she hadn’t been sent by him, he’d no doubt hear of this exchange in passing. “That won’t be an issue,” Zofia’s affect was cool and detached. “He has another, now.” Now. As if so much time had passed. The vampire felt herself bristle. Replaceable. Was that what she was? A piece that could be swapped out and exchanged easily with another? 

“Perhaps,” she echoed, the anger that had bubbled up fading at the mention of the one thing she still, somehow wanted. Family. “I’ll rebuild, I’m sure.” 

_______

There was a switch, like all the heat was sucked out of the air. Inge wasn’t surprised. She looked at Zofia calmly, vaguely understanding of the anger of a scorned woman but also, most of all, protective of Cassius. It was a strange balance to try and uphold. To care for him while also understanding her.

Because there was a string of past lovers, faces that had come after Sanne. She had broken some – if not most – of their hearts, but some of them had left her own metaphorical one cracked. There was still, even after all these years and all her experience, something deeply intimate and vulnerable about the exposure of sex, the constant return for it. She was still emotionally driven, more than by lust. She’d haunted a man who’d broken her heart, once. She got it.

But she wouldn’t tolerate it. Not in herself, let alone in Zofia.

“Indeed.” And it was cruel of him, wasn’t it? To have moved on. It was, in a way. But matters of the heart often were. She got that, too. “And I am sorry, for that. It’s no easy thing. But there’s no use in … eyes for eyes, and the like.” 

Inge hesitated for a moment, then linked her arm back with Zofia’s. “You seem like you know what you want. So you shall get it. And there’s plenty interesting people in this town, surely you know that.” Cassius was one of them — but there was a whole world beside him. “If there’s one thing our kind has, it’s time.”

———

“Well there is a use for it,” the vampire sighed, shaking her head. “But not in this case. Not with him. I can spend that currency elsewhere. With people who actually deserve what is coming to them.” Zofia would rather spend her resources securing her safety and exacting her revenge on the hunters that had taken everything from her than wasting it on someone who, at the end of the day, did not deserve it. 

She let out a soft huff. “I’m very old. I have only  so much time before some switch in me flips and whatever humanity I cling to burns out like a lightbulb. If there’s even much of it left, now. This town may be full of interesting people, but I’m not sure time has much left in that particular deck of cards for me.” Still, there was no point in writing it off entirely. She could still enjoy herself, if she could allow anyone close enough to her to enjoy. 

“You have my word. I’ve no intention of hurting your friend. I have better things to occupy my time with, and no interest in spending it hurting myself further.”

———

Inge had killed a slayer before. Humans died so easily compared to the likes of her. Lacerations of her skin hurt, but she would never bleed out, her skin would always regrow — but humans bled. Humans didn’t need their heads cut off or their bodies starved from sustenance for over a week. But when she’d taken a slayer’s life it hadn’t been calculated revenge. It had just been a move of self defense and desperation. She tended to run, after all, as that was the easiest option for her. Flee into the astral and look down on the world and its dangers. Except for that time. That time she’d drawn her gun and loosened all six bullets and disappeared.

Had it felt good? Sure. There had been a satisfaction. But it hadn’t lasted. Not because she felt guilty, but because in that case death wasn’t the end. She was still looking over her shoulders, there were still hunters out there. It had been futile. It was not something to just throw on the table, though, this insight in that fear of hers she was still convinced didn’t exist. “Good. Focus it on them, then.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps. Maybe the issue is that you’re still thinking in terms of humanity when we’re not human any more and haven’t been in some time,” Inge said. “But you can find your people again. That we do need, hm?” Even she had her tethers. Even if she snipped them from time to time, when she ran. 

She nodded, appreciative. “Perfect,” she almost smiled while saying it. Unsaid went the pain she’d already delivered to Cassius, but Inge wasn’t the type to think much of a slap to the face anyway. “Perhaps we can spend some of that time together, hm? I’d like to hear about all the things you’ve seen and done in your years.”

______

A smile flickered at the corner of her mouth. “Perhaps,” the woman drawled. It was a difficult thing to let go of, humanity. She’d been playing pretend for centuries. Drinking blood from glasses as if it were simply another expensive vintage from the DuPont wine cellar. Zofia had known better, had always known better. It might do better to let herself be something more. Something new. Something not quite human, but not quite monster. And perhaps it was time to find more like minded people. 

“ I think,” The flicker of a smile caught on her lips and lingered. “I think I’d like that very much.” 

[closingwaters]

@zofiawithaz replied to your post “Ran into It was Anyone else see a strange list of...”:

Did you happen to see any other names on the list? Out of a morbid curiosity?

​I did, but I didn't stick around long enough to read thoroughly. There was someone lurking around and I did not like that.

[recoveringdreamer]

Yeah, it was a rabbit! I don't think it wants to eat people, though. It was eating a dumpster. People don't taste like dumpsters! Do you think animal control would [...] hurt it?

... And you're certain it was a rabbit? I think you should stay far away from it, in case it develops a taste for people in addition to dumpsters. Maybe call animal control.

[singdreamchild]

Let Me In || Zofia & Cassius

TIMING: December 11th LOCATION: Masque of the Red Eye PARTIES: Zofia (@zofiawithaz) & Cassius (@singdreamchild) SUMMARY: Cassius meets up with Zofia to offer her a place to stay. Things get deep. She opens up just the tiniest amount, and there are tears shed.

Walking felt awful, his skin felt wrong and his leg still wasn’t healed. Still, no amount of nagging on his sire’s part could stop Cassius from meeting Zofia. It was a complete guess, of course, going out to Masque of the Red Eye and seeing her there. He just got lucky. Seeing her still managed to suck all the air out of his chest, leaving him feeling open and vulnerable. She wasn’t Sofie, and that mattered to him. So, on crutches, he walked into the cafe and sat down across from the woman with a guarded expression. He sat his crutches down against the table before speaking. 

“Well, I’m here if you want to talk. About anything.” Cassius put his hands on the table in front of him, ensuring he was coming across as approachable and not a threat to her. “Or if you don’t want to talk, we can just sit here.” He added, realizing their meeting would be a lot like pulling teeth. “Where have you been staying?” He finally asked the question that had been nagging at him for quite some time. 

She was hungry. And while she’d learned not to completely loathe herself for feeding on humans, there was something to be said for easy, discrete methods of getting what she needed. Zofia sipped on her red eye in the far back corner of the shop. Her back pressed to the wall, she could see everyone who walked in the space, and was close enough to the rear exit if she had to make a quick exit. The front door swung open and Zofia’s eyes darted up to determine if whoever had entered was friend or foe. 

Both, it would seem. Or neither. 

Zofia let out a heavy sigh as she watched Cassius Hawthorne hobble into the shop. A flicker of a frown tugged the corner of her mouth down. What the hell had happened to him? She schooled her expression into careful neutrality. This wouldn’t be like the last time they’d met, where her emotions had ran so high they were practically in another galaxy. No, she would stay calm. Would ignore everything in this shop that made her skin crawl with worry, ignore the startled jolt that pierced her chest every time the door opened, ignore the faces that crept in from time to time at the corners of her vision. “Crutches?” She asked, her voice smooth as honey. Good. Good, Zośka, calm. Nice and calm, she soothed herself. Her eyes flickered to his face, her gaze just below his eyes. “I’ve been around. A magical sort offered me their guest room for a few nights.” She’d floated about the rest of the time. Finding different places to stay tucked carefully away from the sun. 

______________

Cassius pointedly ignored the stares he was getting. It was something he was more than used to with the way he dressed, but it was different now that he knew he was vulnerable. It was a different kind of stare that he didn’t like. As Zofia mentioned them, Cassius’s gaze flickered over to the crutches, then back to her. “Big rock monstrosity. There were a few of us, but I’m not a fighter.” He held up his gloved hands. It was better to cover them up than to let people see what the volmugger acid had done to his skin. “I was the only one that got beat to shit. But, here we are.” He shrugged as if it were either here or there.

He nodded as she explained someone had been kind enough to open their home to her—kind but also incredibly stupid. Cassius wished there was a way to dissipate the awkward tension that hung in the air around them. He knew no way it was going to happen. Well, lay it all out on the line. “I never stopped looking, you know.” He spoke, staring down at his gloved hands for a long moment before finally forcing his eyes to meet hers. “Even when I felt myself slipping, I kept an eye out.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Whoever took you did it well. They didn’t leave a trace. Nothing.” It had been frustrating that there was not a soul that had seen Zofia when she vanished. He hated what it had turned her into, a shell of herself that ruled based on fear instead of anything else. “I know sorry doesn’t make up for the hell you’ve been through, but I am truly and deeply sorry for what happened. All of it.” He tapped his fingertips together, gaze searching Zofia’s.

Zofia’s eyes flickered to his gloved hands. The other corner of her mouth ticked down, a full frown claiming her pursed lips for a moment. “You need to be more careful, you’re going to get yourself killed. You’re immortal, not indestructible.” It wasn’t that she didn’t care. It would have been so much easier if she didn’t. But it wasn’t the faces of those that Zofia barely knew that her mind had conjured. It was those she’d loved and thought had felt the same. And they’d watched, unable and unwilling to come to her aid. So of course she cared. Of course the carefully vacant expression slipped upon hearing he’d been hurt. But it was different now. Before she would have cooed, would have fussed and soothed and healed. Now, she simply observed.

As his eyes searched for hers, her own flicked down. She couldn’t look at him. Not yet. Not now. Not after she’d began to look at those eyes and accepted they weren’t coming to save her. “I never got names.” Names, Zofia had decided early on, would humanize them. And the people who had snatched her out of thin air and locked her away and tormented her to the brink of madness did not deserve humanity. Her mind had carefully forgotten any names they had called each other. But their faces? Those she knew. Those she had made certain to remember. “But it was them.” One of the few perks of this particular conversation was that she didn’t need to explain who them was. Cassius had known all the little details of the downfall of the DuPonts. Knew Zofia had feared them finding her above all else. Her frown returned at the apology. “You’re right. It doesn’t make up for any of it.” Her voice was flat, but her eyes finally locked onto his. “It wasn’t you who orchestrated my abduction. Don’t apologize for things you had no hand in.”

Her mind had gotten many things about his face right in the months it had created visions of him. It had never quite mastered his eyes though. Zofia’s mind had never quite been able to recreate just how much his eyes managed to convey. If eyes were the windows to the soul, Cassius’s windows were flung wide open for her to see into. She scratched at her hand absently as she looked away. “Why do you want to help me, Cassius? It drags you back into a complicated web, and you’re already hurt.”

————

Cassius rolled his eyes at her. He knew he needed to be more careful, but it wasn’t about his safety at that moment. It was about the countless people that could have been injured if he didn’t act. “I can handle myself. Always have.” He responded simply. Seeing this new version of the woman he once loved was strange. At the same time, he wasn’t surprised by it, either. He was simply indifferent, just as she seemed to be towards his general safety.

He knew what they meant. She had told Cassius about the hunters that had killed her family. It had left her broken before, but now that they had taken and tortured her, it had broken her further. It angered him, seeing how much damage these slayers had done to Zofia. It angered him further that there was nothing he could have done to save her. No clues, no nothing. He had failed her once already. “I can still apologize for not doing more to find you. Apologize for moving forward when I shouldn’t have.” He stared down at his hands, finding that it was too much to look up at Zofia.

Their eyes met for a moment, and he watched Zofia fidget. “Why do I want to help?” He echoed, brows furrowing in blatant confusion. “Because you mean something to me. You always have and you always will. For better or worse, we’re family.” He said, knowing that the word family would strike a cord in her one way or the other. “And I don’t abandon the people I consider family just because the roads ahead are winding.” He looked over to the crutches, rolling his eyes. “I’ll be fine in a few day’s time. Besides, I have a doctor on my side.” He crossed his arms over his chest, knowing the ball was back in her court. 

The frown dissipated as he rolled his eyes, the corner of her mouth twitching up in what could almost be considered a smile. Some things hadn’t changed. Except nearly everything else had. “I know that you can.” Zofia’s voice was uncharacteristically gentle. She kept her hands to herself, nails digging into her palms as the ghost of her urging her to check, to fuss, to care. 

Emotions were a confusing, messy thing. She could feel them in her chest like a fly struggling to be free of a spider’s delicate web. He should have done more. The thought simmered through her, only to be met with the thought that he’d done all he could. The two ideas fought each other, unwilling to let one be declared ‘truth’.

Her eyes fell shut as he used that one word, the one weapon in his arsenal that could be used against her and win every time. Family. Family meant protection. Family meant strength, and safety in numbers. It had been taken from her once. Then she was taken from it. Whisked away from that new family, only to return and find she did not quite fit like she once had. But here he was, after all of it, dangling that promise of family over her, a life line. 

“It ended poorly with the magician.” She returned to his original question, letting him see just inside the walls she’d thrown up for herself. “As it turns out necromancers aren’t particularly fond of discovering vampires with their teeth in a man’s neck.” Her tone was delicate, despite the grim words. Zofia didn’t particularly feel like rehashing the memories that had plagued her that night. “As a note, they can make you a puppet, if they do please.”

______

Watching Zofia carefully, Cassius noticed the little slips of who she used to slip through. And then would watch as she grew uncomfortable with such realizations. He wanted to reach across the table and take her hand. He wanted to comfort her and tell her that he’d always be there for her no matter what. But he hadn’t been, not when it mattered. Not when she really needed it. He bit his lip, gaze falling onto his hands clasped on the table before him. 

“A necromancer then,” Cassius spoke with a quirked brow. “I’m sorry to hear that. Something tells me it would have ended messier if time went on.” He mused as he finally looked up from his hands. “Necromancers can control undead and raise dead. That’s the gist I know about them. Had a bad run-in with one in the 90s.” He didn’t elaborate any further than that. He had been on his own. He’d been messy. He’d gotten caught. That was the crux of it.

“I can’t change what’s already been done. But I can try and spend an eternity making up for it.” His gaze fell downward once again, then back up at Zofia. “No matter what form it looks like, I will never stop loving you and wanting the best for you.” There. He had said it. There wasn’t any coming back from it. “So please, stay with me. You can stay for even longer as long as you’re comfortable. You’re always welcome. I just want…” he stopped, shaking his head. “I want you. In any way that looks like.”

“Yes, well I learned that lesson the hard way.” Zofia had been grateful, at least partially, that the necromancer had taken control long enough to pry her off the man she had been moments away from killing. But she remembered the feeling of it. The lack of control. The movements that were not her own. It had pulled her from the memories of the one who had tormented her, yes, but it had also put her squarely back to feeling perfectly trapped. She rubbed at her wrists, grateful not to feel them being pulled away by invisible marionette strings. 

She paused in the habitual breathing she’d fallen into to soothe herself. Zofia didn’t breathe for a long while. Longer than any living person could. Her eyes fixed on some small chip in the wood grain of the table, staring unblinking as her mind worked to process the information it had received. 

A thought wriggled its way into her head. She slowly blinked, each muscle moving as thought in slow motion as the thought settled in her mind. “I’m sure I’ll suffer a great many things in the years ahead,” Zofia quietly observed. “But the one thing I will not suffer any longer is pity. Especially not from you. If this invitation is coming from guilt, or pity, or anything of the like, you can keep it.” She rolled her shoulders back and down, sitting proud as a queen. That pride didn’t meet her face. Instead, she still stared at that flaw in the dark wood of the table in front of her. “You care for him, no? And Richard? What of him? You have many people you should discuss my presence in your life with before rushing into welcoming me home.” Into welcoming her home after she’d wandered in the dark only to find her seat had been taken. 

_________

Cassius’s face morphed from openness to bewilderment. “You think I say these things out of pity?” He was almost offended by the very idea that he would do anything for her out of pity, and that she would believe such a thing. “No. Dismiss that idea out of your head. I’m not doing any of this because of pity. I do it because you’re someone in my life that matters to me. That doesn’t change just because we’re not romantically involved anymore.” He was almost hurt that she would believe that Cassius would reduce all of his feelings for the woman before him down to simple pity and guilt. Did he feel guilty? Sure. But that wasn’t why he was offering her a place to live. 

Then she brought up Lukas and Richard. Both very good points. Points he couldn’t ignore. “First, Richard can suck it. I don’t care what he thinks about what I do with my personal life.” He spoke as he held up a finger. “Second,” Cassius held a second finger, “Lukas knows  I’m here.” He put down his hand. “He was with me the night I reached out. He thought it was a good idea.” His blue eyes searched the woman who called herself Zofia, a name he had only uttered before all of this happened. 

“I can’t believe you think Richard’s opinion matters.” He grumbled, eyes narrowing as he thought back to his sire. Sure, he’d loved Richard once. But after fifty years without him, love faded and soured. What was replaced was the love for what once was and the resentment of being left behind. He had been left behind so many times. He had resigned to Zofia being another one of those people. I won’t let you leave me again, he didn’t say. “You’re hurting. Please, don’t let yourself hurt alone.” Cassius paused, expression growing desperate for the right words to say. For once, words were failing him. Failing him in a moment that he needed them to work. “I cannot make up for what has been done to you. I cannot take back the fact that I couldn’t save you. But I can be there for you in the here and now.” He reached his hands out over the table and lay them palm-up. “Please allow me to be there for you now. I didn’t abandon you, and I won’t do it now.”

He seemed offended that pity had even entered her mind as an option. It was nice to know it wasn’t pity, but could he blame her for being suspect? She’d returned to find her place in his life had been filled. That she had been replaced. Poor little Zofia, half mad, and all alone now. The thought made her skin crawl. She let out a soft snort as he dismissed Richard’s concerns on the matter in its entirety. Though if she had to wager a guess, the elder vampire might not have been entirely opposed to her presence. Zofia hadn’t been a fan of the man in the past, but he had offered help when she’d resurfaced. Perhaps he wasn’t terrible. 

She blinked slowly at the admission that Lukas himself had thought reaching out to her was a good idea. How much did Lukas know, she wondered. Did he know her name? How she and Cassius had met? How much of their little star crossed love story had Cassius shared in the months she had been gone. Or had her name remained unspoken? The belongings in Cassius’ possession merely a memorial to a nameless woman. 

Zofia stared at his outstretched hands. Stared at them, and sat in the silence. Sat and let the words ricochet around in her head as the din of the coffee shop hummed on in the background. He hadn’t abandoned her… but he had moved on. Her jaw worked as she looked at his hands. She wouldn’t give in entirely. Not when she had so very little of herself left to give to people. Not when she was still trying to reassemble the broken bits of her from the crushed pieces they were in. She reached out one hand to him, allowing her fingers to just barely brush against his. “I could come and go as I pleased?” The vampire's voice was soft. Tired. As though she were letting down the very outer wall of her carefully constructed defenses, or at the very least cracking a door open 

____________

And there it was. He wasn’t given much, but Zofia had relented if only just a little. Cassius could work with that. “Of course.” He responded. “You’re your own person. You don’t have to check in with me.” He slowly pulled his hands away, knowing that they weren’t wanted. “No matter what it looks like, I want you in my life. Everything at your pace.” He put his hands into his lap, watching her curiously. 

There were so many things he would do differently if only he could. But as it was, the past had happened. There was nothing he could do to take it back. “You’re very strong,” Cassius said before he had the chance to stop himself. He swallowed, realizing he would say what was on his mind now that he had started. “You broke yourself free. You fought for your own control back. You’re not who you once were, and I’m sorry that it happened, but I’m so proud of you for fighting it.” He paused, staring at his hands when looking at Zofia became too much. “Wherever your future will take you, I hope to remain in your life. No matter how that is. If you want me gone, then that’s alright too. I deserve it. I know I do.” 

He finally looked back up at Zofia, eyes full of sincerity. “You’re fighting to survive right now, and that’s okay. But you’ve got people in your corner to ensure you don’t get hurt again. You’re not alone in this fight. I won’t let you be alone.” he shrugged, finally looking away. He would never overcome the guilt of not being there for her when Zofia needed it most. That was something he had to live with. But he could still fight to be there for her now. At least he could say he tried before she finally told him to leave him alone. He was ready for it.

It was mentally exhausting, keeping her guard up. She was with Cassius, Cassius of all people, and she had been tensed like a deer prepared to run or a wildcat prepared to lunge since he’d stepped foot in the cafe. Cassius. Who even if he had moved on, had once loved her. Had once held her tight and taken care of her. Zofia watched as his hand pulled away, her eyes tracking the slow, deliberate movement. 

Zofia paused, too distracted by his words to keep up the facade of breathing. Strong. She hadn’t felt strong. Even now, she didn’t feel strong. She had endured, yes, but she could do nothing but watch as they ripped who she had been to shreds. And she had sacrificed those fragile pieces of herself that had not grown back when her body mended itself, because she knew that she would not survive if she held on to being gentle and kind freely. Those emotions had a time and a place. And most of all they had a price. A price others must pay to earn them from her. A price she would have to pay if she showed them. 

But now, sitting in this cafe, wounded in his own right, but still willing to show up and try and find a way to make it all right… Cassius had paid that price. For now at least. 

Wordlessly, the vampire stood up and went to the counter. Moments later, she returned and set a cup down in front of the other vampire. Her hand hovered a fraction of a centimeter above his shoulder for a moment before she took her seat again. “You should drink. You’ll heal faster if you do.” She couldn’t acknowledge it. Zofia knew if she acknowledged all that he had just laid out in front of her, she would not be able to keep up her walls for much longer, and she was unwilling to put herself in that position again. She needed that guard, that edge about her now. But for Cassius, she’d make this small concession. “You are a good person, Cassius.” 

__________

Cassius watched as Zofia walked off from him, and he had accepted that it was over. He’d said his peace, and he could move on. But the door to the shop never opened. Instead, she went to the counter and ordered. Confused, he watched as she returned with a drink and plunked it down across from him. “I’m not a good person,” he responded automatically. Once he’d said it, it was like the floodgates had finally opened up. “A good person would have kept looking despite the odds. A good person wouldn’t have let you rot away in a cell while they moved on with someone else.” He stared down at the drink before him, suddenly disgusted with its contents.

“A good person would stick by your side and ensure you never get hurt again. A good person?” He scoffed, shaking his head. “I didn’t do any of those things. You had to search me down. I assumed you were dead. I don’t deserve that label.” He pushed the drink away from himself, disinterested in its contents.

He sat there silently for a long moment before finally speaking again, unable to look her in the eyes. “When you needed me most, I wasn’t there. What kind of person does that? And to make it all worse, move on with someone else. A fucking monster does that.” Suddenly, the only thing he could think about was what a mistake all of it was. “If I just had kept looking, maybe things wouldn’t have turned out this way.” He muttered to himself, taking a deep breath. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to keep himself together for Zofia’s sake. But there he was, falling apart. 

Before he could let himself spiral further, Cassius finally reached out and grabbed the cup that had been pushed away and drained its contents. “There.” he struggled to stand, grabbing his crutches and muttering about how ridiculous he felt. “I can’t help but feel like all this was my fault. I failed you. I failed us. I failed myself.” He ran a hand across his face before finally hobbling toward the door. 

Her eyebrow ticked up in surprise at the immediate response. She hadn’t bought the drink for him in an attempt to make him feel worse about the whole cursed situation. If anything, Zofia had bought it so the woman she used to be would quit turning over in her metaphorical grave for five damned minutes. Instead, Zofia had seemingly made the situation worse with six words. 

She watched him carefully as the words poured out of him like a waterfall. Like she’d finally uncorked the pressurized bottle, and now every negative feeling Cassius had been simmering on since Zofia had reappeared was flowing freely. She couldn’t think of the right words to interrupt. How could she? How could she when the first days of her hard won freedom had sounded the same in her head. Her mind had been an echo chamber where the only words she could hear in her head were abandonment and replacement. And seeing him happy again? With someone new? When do little time had passed? She’d let the wounds that had been inflicted on her heart fester those first days. 

She watched as he drained the red eye before fumbling with his crutches. Zofia blinked, unable to think of the right thing to say. And he was walking away from her. He was walking away from her again. “No.” She walked quickly, cutting around the side to stand in front of him. “Sit back down, Cassius.” It came out firm, but it wasn’t a command. She wouldn’t force him to stay, but didn’t want this conversation to end with him wallowing over things he could not do anything to change. She held up two fingers to the person behind the counter, and two more red eyes were placed on the counter. She kept one for herself, drumming her nails against the cup. 

She walked back to the table and set the other cup back in front of Cassius’s chair, and she fixed him with a steely gaze. “You said you thought I was dead. When did you come to that conclusion? Did you mourn me, in some way?”

________

Cassius turned around as Zofia made him sit back down. He acted like he didn’t want to, but he knew that he really wanted to. Another red eye was put in front of him as he hobbled back to his seat. He really needed his leg to heal up. He stared down at the drink with a vacant expression for a long moment.

Then she asked the question he knew the answer to in a heartbeat. “Of course, I mourned you.” He answered as he sat back down, voice quiet and weak. “I’d sit in your flat for days at a time, not taking care of myself but taking care of your apartment. Because I knew you’d want your belongings kept after.” He ran his tongue along his teeth, throwing himself back into those painful memories he had long suppressed and didn’t discuss. “When a month passed with no leads, something broke.” He paused, running a finger over the rim of the cup before taking a sip and putting it back down. 

“Something in me broke, and I started killing people. I didn’t care about the repercussions or what Richard would think.” His voice turned icy and hard as if remembering it was bringing back those feelings of complete and utter aloneness. “I remember burying someone and just screaming at the top of my lungs.” His voice was distant as if he’d fully returned to that moment. His eyes went watery and far away. “I lied when I said I saved some of your stuff.” He spoke, gripping the mug in his hand harder than he should. “I saved all of it.” He thought back to his desperate pleas to the landlord. To let him get all her stuff out in case she came back. “The only thing they took away was your car.” he swirled the remaining liquid in the mug around, unable to look her in the eyes.

“I never stopped mourning you.” He finally looked up at her, that far-away gaze refocusing on her face. Fuck, he loved that face. “And I don’t think I ever will.” 

—————

She waited patiently for him to sit back down. Time was difficult for her now. It moved however it wanted- Quickly. Slowly. It didn’t seem to care how Zofia perceived it. It felt like ages that she sat there alone at the table. And then she blinked and he was in front of her, staring down at his coffee cup. 

As he spoke, Zofia closed her eyes. She knew that pain. She knew it keenly. The darkness had not robbed her of the memory of the night she’d lost the last of her family. Of sitting in a car waiting, hoping beyond hope that after the next song on the radio ended, Henri would come back and they could keep running. That they would be alright. She knew how it felt when that blade of acceptance finally wedged itself between her ribs and she knew there was no way her dear friend of so many years could have survived. She had loved him like a brother. 

But Cassius had loved her as something more. She remembered how it had felt when he had vanished with no explanation. The fear that had choked her. The denial. The sorrow. And that had only been a week or so. She had been gone for months. 

He finally stopped talking, and it was as though something inside her had simply hollowed out. She wasn’t sure what it had been that had lived in that spot before. Only that she’d miss it. She stood once more, grappling with the information she had now, grabbing Cassius yet another coffee. She would fight him over it if he dared give her a hard time. It wasn’t safe outside for the likes of them. He needed to heal. 

They both did. 

She set the third red eye down in front of him, but before she returned to her seat, she let Sofie have one last thing. One last thing before the old ghost could find rest in that hollow grave Zofia felt in her chest. She leaned down and pressed a kiss to his temple, and stayed there for a long moment. Letting out a heavy sigh, she stepped away and settled back in her seat. 

“I mourn her too.” Her voice was just above a whisper, but they cut through the noise in the coffee house. “I need to, or I will never be past it, even when every last one of them is dead. Knowing that I don’t mourn her alone helps…” she looked up at Cassius, a sad look in her eyes. “But if she had not died, I would not have survived.”

___________

Something about the way she pressed that kiss to his forehead fundamentally broke a part of Cassius. Instead of replying to her, he closed his eyes. At that moment, he felt so weak and fragile, as if one simple puff of air could make him crumble. He couldn’t cry in front of her, not there. Not then. It was one thing to mourn someone alive. It was another thing entirely to mourn someone sitting right in front of him. 

“You’re wrong,” he said in a broken and cracking voice. “Because if she were gone, she wouldn’t be stuffing these stupid drinks down my throat like her life depended on it.” Opening his eyes, they were piercing and hardened. “You’re this version of yourself out of a need to survive.” He added, giving her a once-over. “Are you changed? Yes, absolutely, you are. But who you were doesn’t simply cease to be just because of that.” 

He put a hand down on the table and leaned forward, a tear finally escaping the corner of his eye. “I refuse to believe that she isn’t in there.” Maybe his hope kept him from outright balling in front of her. Maybe it was denial. “You’re hurting. You’ve been through a traumatic experience.” He tapped a finger on the counter. The only thing holding him back from a complete breakdown was the fact that Lukas was still there and would be worried sick about him if he did anything stupid. 

“Right.” He said, a finality in his tone. “Key’s under the mat. I’ve got to go.” Cassius wanted to say but didn’t. He was rooted in place, still waiting for that blow that pushed him over the edge. He was rooted in that seat, staring at a person who claimed to be a stranger now. “I know your ambition hasn’t changed. I know that you still crave belonging and family. I see it in your eyes. You still care about the people important to you. I see that too.” 

Struggling to get to his feet, Cassius was determined to make a point. “You’re allowed to be hurt. But just don’t fall apart completely. I meant it when I said you were strong.” He put the crutches under his arms and nodded his head once. “You’re protecting yourself. I see you pull away from yourself every time you almost let yourself feel something.” His tone changed to a biting one; he was hurt and letting it show. “Proszę, nie schodź z tej krawędzi, Zofia.”

She’d let him in the tiniest bit, and it had just hurt him more. It gnawed at that spot in her chest she thought the old version of herself could finally rest in, deciding that the old Sofie could not, and would not rest easy. Zofia’s expression grew somber the moment Cassius’s gaze hardened. 

He had a point of course. Sofie Du Pont would never stop haunting her. Her habits would still live on in Zofia’s god damn inexplicable need to see the other vampire healed and whole. To do little kindnesses for people who had earned them. She wished so very much that she could easily deny the world any access to any corner of her heart. But there was the proof in the three coffee cups on the small table. 

Zofia’s expression shut down. Whatever windows into her soul she’d let slip open for Cassius to perhaps see in and understand , they slammed back up. But as she slammed those windows shut they seemed to break, just a little. 

Her face may have been stoic, but it didn’t stop a silent tear from tracking down her face. Zofia drew back in surprise at the sound of her mother tongue falling from Cassius’s lips. When he’d texted her in polish she’d assumed he’d had help. Either from the old bat he called his sire or from some app on his phone. But he’d spoken the words clearly. That was entirely Cassius. She couldn’t explain why hearing it made another year track down her cheek. 

“A co jeśli pozostaną tylko połamane kawałki, kochanie?” She asked in a monotone voice from her seat, that damned tear dripping and hitting the back of her folded hands. 

___________

Cassius stood there for a moment after she asked him that question. A contemplative expression crossed over his face as the moments passed. Finally, he looked back at Zofia, the woman who claimed Sofie was long gone. And maybe she was, but the blonde didn’t see it that way. He saw a woman who survived despite everything, desperate to survive. Afraid to be vulnerable again. He saw the face of someone he loved who had been through hell and made it out the other side. “Then we pick up the pieces and create something new with them.” 

The answer felt simple, but the reality was much heavier. “All I’m trying to say is you don’t have to pick up the pieces alone.” Cassius adjusted his grip on the crutches, pulled a key out of his pocket, and tossed it onto the table. “You’re welcome anytime and free to leave as you please. Just… don’t go in the basement. Richard’s whole weird setup.” He made a face, knowing that part of his own house was off-limits to even him. 

Before he walked through the door, he looked back at Zofia with a guarded expression. “You may not be ready to let anyone into your life again. Maybe not for a while. But…” he paused as if trying to force words out that were stuck in his throat. “Don’t forget there are people out there that want to help you. Sharpen the broken pieces into weapons, sure. But don’t turn them on the people who love you.” After saying his piece, he nodded once and hobbled out the door and into the night. He could only hope that the words would stick.

[deathsplaything]

A Puppet on Strings || Alistair & Zofia

Location: Streets of Oldtown Timing: December 8th, evening Parties: Alistair (@deathsplaything) & Zofia (@zofiawithaz) Summary: Zofia goes out to kill someone she swears is her captor, but Alistair stops her before she goes too far.

She had them pinned against the wall. To the odd passersby it would probably look like a lovers embrace. Except for the fact that Zofia’s teeth were firmly planted in the man’s neck, and his gurgled, whispered pleas. 

It looked just like him. 

Just like him. 

She’d been minding her own business, getting herself a damn drink and then there he was. Next to her at the bar, talkingtalkingtalking, offering to buy her a drink with that same smile- that same smug grin that had leered down at her as he dug and carved for answers she didn’t have and wouldn’t give. Talking, taunting, sitting next to her. 

She wished he’d been the one she killed when she escaped. But this was her chance. This was it- he was so foolish, following her outside, letting her get close, going into an alley with her. She didn’t care if it hurt, if the blood burned- she’d bite him anyway just because she could. She’d sunk her teeth in deep, surprised to find his blood didn’t burn. So she drank. Drank and tried to fill the Sofie sized void in her chest. The one that still thought of Cassius, of her clan of everything that came before. 

Then her jaw opened. And she was pulled away. 

She snarled, confused as to just the fuck was happening. Zofia went to launch herself back at him, but she felt stuck. Like a spider’s delicate webs had stuck to her limbs and were controlling her. 

Like a puppet. 

She felt like she was restrained again. Like she was back there. Had this all been a cruel dream? A joke? Had she never escaped to begin with? Fuck that, fuck all of that- she let out a scream, frantic to be free of the trap. 

____________

He had been walking home from making the bank deposit, something he didn’t do often, but Alistair had insisted after Melody had to tend to her daughter at home who wasn’t feeling well. So with Brutus in hand, he was simply walking home. The sun had already gone down and the bank was just about to close as he arrived. He had almost gotten home when he heard it. With his hearing better because of his loss of sight, he heard whimpering, and not the kind one wanted to hear. Not the good kind.

Using Brutus to see, he almost groaned aloud when he saw her. It was Zofia. Of course it was Zofia. He had to think quickly if he wanted to stop her from killing the man. He hesitated, and for a moment he wondered if he should stop her. No, he had to act. Closing his eyes, he channeled into the magic around him, feeling the surge hit him as soon as he tapped into it. Alistair put a hand out in front of him, and threads of a pale green smoke began to encompass Zofia, attaching to her body like threads. This magic wouldn’t last long, but enough to yank her away from the man. He pulled his hand back, and it yanked her away. The as soon as it had been cast, the magic disappeared. Alistair opened his eyes. He felt his own energy dissipate. 

“You can’t just kill people because you feel like it.” He called out to her, arms crossed over his chest. “And you’re going to get yourself into more trouble if you keep doing that.” He wagged a finger at her, advancing closer like a viper about to strike. The man had long since crumpled to the ground. Alive, but barely. “Dammit, Zofia. I took a chance on you and this is what you do with your time?”

__________

Him. 

She knew him. But he wasn’t from before, he was from after. Why was he here? Maybe it wasn’t a dream- she had gotten out, she was free. Emotions spiraled as she kept chanting the four letter word to herself in her mind: free. 

He was… scolding her? Why was he scolding her, she wasn’t a child. She was easily six times older than he was and he was wagging his finger at her like she was a naughty child with her hand in the cookie jar. “You knew what I was when you took a chance. And I can kill people if I feel like it when they-“

A groan sounded from the other end of the alley, and Zofia’s focus shifted back to the man on the ground. It was almost done, she could finish this. The vampire shifted, ready to strike again. 

But then she saw the man’s blood streaked face. She really saw it. 

And it wasn’t her captor. 

It was someone else entirely. Someone who had the same eyes, perhaps, the same smile…but other than those small details, there was no real resemblance. Her mind had been prepared to condemn him to death for a sin he hadn’t committed. Her eyes widened, and she stared at what she’d done. She pressed bloodstained fingertips to her mouth in horror. 

“Fix it.” She whispered, frantic eyes darting to the blind man and his dog. “I have to fix it. I’ll fix it- you should go. You should go, it’s not safe. Bad things are out this time of night.” She clearly wasn’t having a sane enough day to be around people, and she didn’t want to hurt someone who’d done her the kindness of offering her shelter. 

________

As Alistair held Brutus’s harness a little tighter, he waited. Thankfully, Brutus wouldn’t let harm befall him, but he wasn’t sure if the dog would have time to register it. “Take him to get help and then meet me at the flat. We have things to discuss.” His tone indicated that this wasn’t up for debate. This was a demand. “Don’t make me have to do that again.” He then spoke in a quieter, more desperate tone. It was strange that he was so hard-pressed about controlling the undead and raising the dead when he easily sacrificed people to save someone else. But even still, it was his line in the sand he didn’t like to cross. 

“I can’t fix this mistake. The best you can do is get him to a hospital and leave him there.” He turned around to leave, shaking his head. “Come on, Brutus.” He murmured to his dog, who began to guide him back toward home. Whether she would join him there remained to be seen. As he walked home, he couldn’t help but feel even more idiotic than before. A vampire was going through something, and he let her into his home. Alistair always knew his inability to leave people to struggle would do him in, but not this quickly. She needed real help, and he couldn’t give it. He didn’t know anyone that would be equipped to help her. Then again, he was sure the therapists in Wicked’s Rest had seen some serious shit. 

He needed answers from her that she hadn’t been willing to give in the past. But now, now that Alistair knew she was killing people? He had to do something. He just hoped it didn’t have to be in the form of her as a sacrifice. “Don’t be a fool,” he muttered to himself as he walked. No, he couldn’t do nothing. Not anymore.

Time passed Zofia in a blur. Her mind registered the words he said, at least partially. Dropping a man at the hospital unexplained wasn’t usually an easy task, but when his neck looked as though a hungry animal had gone in for a taste it made things more difficult. She’d made quick work of it, quick as she could. Moving quickly enough so that no one would pay too much notice to ‘the Samaritan dropping off the man’. The blood soaked Samaritan who’d been responsible for the whole affair. 

She left the hospital and made her way through the darkened alleys of town, trying to get her head on straight. It had looked just like him. Sounded like him. It was him, it had to have been- and yet it wasn’t. She should have known the instant his blood touched her tongue and she’d gone unscathed. And yet she’d just gorged herself. Zofia pressed herself flat against a cold concrete wall, willing her thoughts to still. And what if he had deserved it. If he had been a terrible person. She ought to have finished the job- it was a waste that she hadn’t finished eating, what was she doing ?! 

She was of two minds. One that felt remorse, and one that regretted the interruption. The interruption… How had she stopped, she wondered? Alistair. His words in the alley suddenly clicked into place. Turning on her hell, she changed directions, heading to his flat. 

She stood outside the door for ages, trying to decide if she’d knock. Cursing under her breath, she rapped her knuckles against the door and waited. 

_______________________________________

After waiting for what felt like years, Alistair finally heard a soft knock at the door. Yep, that was definitely her. He got off the couch and walked across the flat to open the front door wide enough to let her in. “Start talking.” He insisted as he shut the door behind the footsteps of those who had walked into the flat. His tone wasn’t angry, though it was tense. He was withholding judgment until she told her story. He did not explain his power or that he controlled her. 

In the center of the living room, the rug had been pulled away to reveal a spell circle. It was nothing special, just a large sigil drawn in white paint on the hardwood floor. “I won’t use it if you don’t give me a reason to.” He explained, knowing it would be the first thing Zofia would notice. “I’m sure you have questions for me as well.” He spoke with a huff as he sat on the sofa, Brutus lying down at his feet. He said nothing, only waiting for her to start talking. 

—————————————

Zofia barely walked into the flat. She crossed the threshold, but lingered near the door. She wasn’t about to allow herself to be trapped, not again. And the tension in the air made her feel like the cage was swinging overhead, just waiting for her to step on the trigger. 

Then she saw the sigil. She didn’t know what it meant, or what exactly it would do, but she figured she probably didn’t want to find out. Her eyes tracked him as he made his way to the sofa, sitting with Brutus at his feet. He was probably watching from the dogs perspective, making certain she wasn’t about to strike. 

She stood in silence, trying to find the words to explain herself. She wasn’t certain where to begin. Zofia swallowed, eyeing the door, debating whether it would be better for her to just flee. “I thought he was someone else. He was someone else- the same face. It was him, and then it wasn’t.” She knew she wasn’t making sense, but rational thought had long since parted ways with her. 

“He was sitting there pretending he hadn’t stood there with that smug grin for months- because he didn’t- but I thought it was him. I thought he was there, taunting me. I should have known, the blood wasn’t right. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t him.” She leaned back against the wall, the pressure of it there doing little to soothe the mounting hysteria. Zofia kept wiping her hand against her coat, willing it to be cleansed of the blood that stained it. “I just…. I was like a puppet… How?” 

______________

Before he could stop it, a frustrated noise escaped Alistair’s lips. “That’s not an answer.” He growled. “Who is this man you thought he was? What did they do to you?” He knew he was pressing into something that shouldn’t be pressed, but he was frustrated. “I can’t do shit if you give me nothing to work with!” He threw his hands up, then slapped his thighs as he brought his hands back down. He let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Something happened to you. You went missing long enough for your clothes to be in tatters. Start there, what happened?”

Alistair felt like he was trying to grab hold of air the way he was getting fistfuls of nothing from her non-answers. “Who is him?” He asked again, this time in a much calmer voice. “Sit on the couch with me. Take a deep breath.” He patted the empty seat beside him. He wasn’t going to get anywhere by getting angry with her. If anything, that would drive her right out of the flat and back into the night. He wasn’t about to have her hurt another person. 

When she began to get sidetracked by asking him about how she had been controlled, he felt his frustration rising again. “I’ll explain that later. After you tell me what caused you to attack that man.” Alistair raised a brow, silent and expectant. Brutus, meanwhile, seemed to be perfectly content at his owner’s feet, eyes closed as he snored softly. He couldn’t help but envy his dog, sleeping soundly through what was easily the most frustrating thing he had dealt with all month, and he dealt with a lot.

The more her panic grew, the greater Alistair’s frustration seemed to get. She knew she wasn’t helping him to understand, not with the fragments that her mind kept circling like a starved vulture. Zofia sunk her teeth into her lip, trying to distract herself from her racing thoughts with anything.  And then his tone shifted. Calm. Coaxing. She eyed his hand as he patted the empty spot beside him. 

Zofia slowly inched closer, until she was perched on the far edge of the sofa, keeping a healthy space between them. She figured from where she was, she’d only need a few steps to make it to the door. Or, if it went horribly wrong, she could try to go out the window. She sat still, breathing to center herself rather than out of necessity. 

“I don’t know who they are. I don’t have a name.” She sighed, rubbing at her face. The dog was asleep, so she didn’t need to worry about him seeing her streaked with a strangers blood and deciding she looked like a monster and that he should find a stake. 

“You know about vampires.” Her voice was hollow. As though she could give nothing but the facts of the matter. “So I assume you know about clans. I was part of one in France. Someone has been hunting us for years. I didn’t realize…” she paused, shaking her head. “I was a foolish young thing. You’re impervious to illness, to age… you cheat death and see empires rise and fall. You sit in the lap of luxury and enjoy, never wanting, never hungry, no need to hunt, to fight to survive. And you don’t see the curtain falling.” 

“They killed my sire and her husband about sixty or so years ago.” She closed her eyes. “They were like parents to me. I didn’t realize we had been in any danger until they didn’t come back. Henri- one of the other members of our little family, he and I ran for another ten years. We didn’t know if there was anyone left other than us, and if there were they’d probably gone into hiding. And then Henri vanished… I assumed they got him. I haven’t seen him in half a century.” 

“I was here in town. I had a life here, I was safe here. I had a new family here I had love.” Her voice wobbled. She smothered the sliver of Sofie that cried out as her story was told. Zofia continued, her voice carefully neutral. “In the summer, they found me. I suppose there are still others they’re chasing, others more dangerous than little Sofie DuPont.” She spat the name out. Like it had betrayed her. Like the kindness and trusting nature of that woman had been her downfall. “So they took me. And I sat alone underground, in the dark for months. They tried to get answers and I didn’t have any. They thought I was holding out. So they kept trying… new methods. Of getting me to talk. One day they made a mistake, and I got out. I took their numbers down by one when I left. I thought it only fair.” 

__________

In truth, Alistair didn’t know all that much about vampires. Just the basics: they were real, drank blood, and didn’t like the sun very much. He didn’t bother to explain this to Zofia but attempted to keep up all the same. This clan was a family, then. A family that had been hunted to extinction. He frowned as he took in the new information, head dipping as he processed it all. He didn’t interrupt her as she told her story. It tugged at his heartstrings and left him wanting to take her hand in reassurance. But who’s reassurance? He lifted his hand and slowly drifted it toward the direction of her voice and found it good enough when it landed on her shoulder. 

Sofie Du Pont was a new name that she used in malice. It differed from the name she had introduced herself with, Zofia Kowalska. “So this old you, this Sofie Du Pont.” He began, keeping his hand stead on her shoulder. “She was hunted along with the rest of her clan.” He began to repeat the facts back at her to ensure he was getting it all right. “And she was captured and tortured for information. Information she didn’t have.” His frown deepened, and he shifted his weight as he let his hand drop to hers. “Sofie Du Pont died then, didn’t she? That old life she had, it was lost with her innocence.” 

He knew what it was like to be hated for what he was. He hadn’t been hunted for sport, but he could understand it to a fraction. “Zofia Kowalska, your real name, then.” He deduced as he crossed one leg over the other. He focused on the sound of Brutus’s breathing momentarily before continuing. “So this person you attacked, you kept saying he was this guy he wasn’t. Your tormentor?” His voice was quiet, as if he feared saying the wrong thing. “I can’t say for certain if these hunters are still around. I’m sure you did a number on them.” He frowned, knowing that housing her could spell trouble for him in the long term. But he’d never turned someone away before. He always helped. “I’ll keep you as safe as I can here. Look into someone to do some basic protection magic around here.” 

Alistair sighed, realizing it was his turn to explain things. “I told you before that I wield magic.” He began, shifting his body in the direction of Zofia’s voice. “I’m a necromancer.” There, he had said it. No going back now. “Death magic, if you will. And since you are dead, I can control you if I need to. Because I saw you killing someone, I used it to get you off of him. It's not a big ritual. That comes with sigils.” He gestured vaguely at the ground, referring to the spell circle he had drawn out on the floor. The paint was raised, undoubtedly so that he could feel where everything was. “What I did back in the ally was a very temporary spell. The more complexities I put into it, the more effective it can become.” He removed his glasses, revealing the burn scars covering the top half of his face. “The glasses I wear are enchanted. They hide the sacrifice I gave to heal someone.” He didn’t mention that it hadn’t worked. “The way I use necromancy is to heal people. But like all magic, it comes with a big price tag.” He put his hands out before him, tipping them like a scale. “To heal someone,” he raised one hand higher than the other, “another must take on their wounds.” He lofted the other hand high. “Balance must be maintained. Necromancy is all about balance. To bring someone back from death, another must die.” He fell silent, waiting for her to say something. “Now we know each other better.”

————————————————————-

Her eyes opened as the weight of a hand settled on her shoulder. She flinched in surprise, but she didn’t pull away. It was like having a tether for a boat in a storm so it didn’t drift off and get dragged out to sea. “They were French, I lived in France for the most part… I was a new thing. I thought a new name fit.” Her eyes settled shut when his hand found hers, recounting the end of her story. Zofia let out a ragged breath, leaning back into the cushion of the couch, wishing it would magically open up and swallow her whole. “She did. She’s still in here I think… like a ghost in a haunted house. She drifts through sometimes. But I can’t be her anymore.”

“My birth name, yes.” She confirmed. They sat in silence a beat before he continued. As he spoke, Zofia’s heart ached in her chest. The gentleness is what broke her. She sniffled, pulling herself away from comfort she did not deserve. “It wasn’t him.” Guilt dripped from her words. “I thought it was him, but it wasn’t… it was so real though- I.” She crossed her arms tightly across her chest. “He looked like who I assumed was the leader of the operation.” Her voice was void of expression as she fought to keep herself stead, hastily swiping at tears before they could fall. “I only got out because they’d only left one behind to guard. They didn’t think I was a threat. If it had been more than one. I’d likely be making my eternal resting place on the inside of some bastard's vacuum cleaner.” 

Her eyes darted over at his offer and she shook her head. “I’m more trouble than I’m worth. I may too by on occasion, but I will not stay long enough to bring trouble to your door. You don’t want to deal with these people.”

Zofia watched carefully as he explained his side of the story. Her heart ached a little as he half explained what had happened to his eyes. She hoped that whatever he’d saved for the cost of his sight, that the price had been worth it. “Could you have borrowed from me?” She asked, unsure of how it worked. “To fix him?  Or no, because I’m not alive, technically.” 

____________________

Alistair thought for a moment. It was easy to separate the person he was before he lost Mikael from the person he was after he lost him. After all, it had been defined by more than just losing him. The loss of his sight had defined it, and as a result, a loss of the career he had left his family for. “I get it,” he spoke, voice almost a whisper with how quiet it was. He didn’t talk about this stuff. Not even Melody knew much about his time before Mikael. All of it was just too painful for him. What he’d lost, the treatment given to him by his parents, all of it. “She’ll always be there, even if you don’t want her to be. She’s who you are, even if you don’t want to see it. She’s still you, but she’s been molded by trauma.” 

“No,” Alistair spoke as she recounted the man she had attacked. “He wasn’t. You have to learn not to trust your own mind for a little bit.” He frowned, crossing his arms over his chest. “I had a partner. We were together for eight years. Not the point. Point is, he got taken one night by a deranged psycho who wanted the family secrets. He got hurt, and I couldn’t save him. I kept seeing the man who hurt him all over the place, but it was never him. I was so hung up on finding him that I lost myself for a bit. Took a while to pick up the pieces.” He blinked, eyes glancing over in her general direction. “It’s okay to take a while to pick up the pieces, Zofia.” His voice was gentle. He didn’t know if she would be receptive to his words, but he had to try at least to appeal to the part of her that wasn’t driven mad by bloodlust. 

“I know I don’t have to help you, and I know the dangers. But I took you in, I don’t intend on casting you out just because a spooky bad guy is after you.” Alistair waved a hand, the notion itself ridiculous to him. “If you’ll let me, I’m here to help. It’s kinda what I do.” 

He frowned as she asked if he could have fixed him. “No, when they’re that hurt, it takes a one-to-one comparison. If he were human, I’d need to use a human sacrifice. If he were a fae, I’d need a fae. So on and so on.” He took a moment, adjusting his position in his seat. “In the shop, I have a back room. I heal people there. Some don’t know the extent of the damage they do to someone else to heal them. Others do and just don’t care. I take the bad people and use them as sacrifices for the more mundane healings. When it’s more complex, things get dicey. Sometimes, I get lucky, and I have the correct species. Sometimes, I don’t. Sometimes people die anyway when a spell doesn’t go right.” He pointed at his eyes when he referenced a spell not going right. He slid his sunglasses back onto his face after pointing to himself. “I’m not letting you leave just because you don’t think you’re worth saving. I think you’re worth saving, which must count for something.”

‘I understand’ always felt like one of those things people said to be kind, but they didn’t really understand. Not this time, though. Zofia didn’t know what had happened to him in his life to know what it was like to be haunted by the ghost of who he’d been before, but he described it well enough to know it wasn’t just an attempt to make her feel better. The more he talked, the more pieces of his puzzle began to fall into place. She couldn’t imagine losing a partner in that fashion. But she knew what it was like to lose people she cared for. Knew that one day or eight years or half a century later, while it might become less sharp with time, that pain never really went away. Not fully. And there were still days where it hurt as badly as the day it had torn her heart apart. 

Slowly she began to unwind from herself, to come out of the corner of the sofa she’d tucked herself into. She didn’t know if this was magic too. He could control her if he wanted to, and she supposed that ought to make her angry. Angry enough to lash out at him. But then the image of an innocent man’s bloodied face appearing from the haze she had been in crept across her mind. Zofia could deal with being controlled a little, she supposed. If only to protect her from herself. 

She blinked, looking at him in surprise. “You just. Have a stock of bad people on hand? For healing purposes? What determines a bad person?” A soft, crazed giggle erupted. “If you didn’t know my story would I be bad? I’m certainly not good.” Her mind trailed to the handful of lookalikes she’d drained out of hunger and some half crazed attempt to get a message across. That was just her need for blood tangling with the pain that Cassius had seemed to move on without looking for a way to help her. And she still didn’t feel guilty about it. She didn’t feel much of anything about it, and she knew she ought to. 

Worth saving. Those words rattled something deep inside her. “Why?” She asked, her voice unsteady and thick. “What makes me worth saving?”

_________

Pulling a face, Alistair shook his head at her words. “I wouldn’t call it a stockpile. One at a time, really.” It was strange to talk about the truth of what he did. If the wrong person found out, surely he’d be run out of town or worse. He then thought for a long moment, frowning. “The people I deal with don’t have redeeming qualities.” He spoke bluntly as he got more comfortable in his seat. He didn’t seem to know how to sit properly in a seat without splaying his legs out and leaning back with an arm against the back of the couch. “They’re werewolves that constantly kill, vampires that have lost themselves in their bloodlust.” He raised a brow, expression pointed. “You haven’t lost yourself to it. You’re just…” he waved his hands in the air as he tried to devise a way to put it. “Just a touch traumatized.” He gave a wry smile, knowing it wasn’t an elegant way of putting it. But he was never one for elegance, anyway.

“What makes you worth saving?” He questioned back at her. He thought for a moment, wondering if there was a way not to say what he felt deep in his gut. “What makes you worth saving isn’t about you.” He confessed, knowing he was helping her for purely selfish reasons. “I helped you because no one was there when I needed help.” There, he had put it out into the open. She could either accept that or she couldn’t. Either way, he had spoken his truth. “Despite everything against her, I recognize someone who survived and crawled her way back out from six feet under.” His words were gentle as if he were afraid of spooking her. “So yes, you’re someone worth saving. You just may not see it. May not want to see it. And that’s okay. It’s something to work towards as you try to get yourself back on your feet.”

She wondered if he’d still say the same thing if he knew about the handful of Cassius look-alikes she’d left strewn about town. Zofia doubted he’d be able to find a way to call that redeemable. The first few days of freedom had been difficult. She’d been on edge. She still heard people that weren’t there, still felt eyes on her no matter where she went. Some primal part of herself told her to drink, and some scorned, betrayed part of herself told her to make a point. She shifted, uncomfortable as her train of thought led her to question what exactly about her was redeemable. She took the thought and stuffed it far away in a dark corner of her mind to address it some other time. 

And yet there he was, continuing to talk and taking that box that she’d hastily tucked away in the shadows of her mind and shining a spotlight on it. She let out a long, heavy sigh as she studied him. He’d clearly been through the darkness before. He seemed to have come out the other side in tact. The ghost that haunted her thoughts reached toward that, hoping beyond hope that it wasn’t too late to turn back from the ledge she’d found herself at the top of. “If I found them,” She started slowly. “And I was certain I was right. Would you still stop me from finishing it?” From putting the damn nightmare to an end. Maybe then she could rest easier. Maybe then she could rebuild with the confidence that she wouldn’t have to burn the rest of the world down to protect what was hers.

____________________________________________________________________________

The necromancer fell silent for a long moment, expression unchanging as he digested the information that Zofia had given him. “I know you’re a vampire. I know you need blood to live.” He began, mulling the idea like a sommelier tasting a good wine. “But you don’t need to kill ‘em to do it, do you?” Alistair was trying to prove a point. “You can choose to fight what you’ve become or can’t. In which case, I feel a need to step in.” He decided honesty would be the best choice of action in this situation. He didn’t know what she could do, and maybe he was a complete idiot for taking the woman under his wing. He was projecting his shit onto someone who couldn’t even distinguish real life from her demons. “Fuck.” He muttered to himself as he made the revelation. 

“You tell me everything else you’ve done. Going to have more than just those hunters showin’ up on the bloody door.” Alistair grumbled to himself as he stood up to start pacing around. He was a fool for pitying someone he should’ve walked away from. She’d have more than just the slayers that wronged her in the first place if she didn’t begin to clean up her act. “Make an effort to stop yourself from killing innocent people like you did tonight. And you’ll tell me who else you’ve been killing while at it. Otherwise, you get the fuck out of my flat, and you never come back. Do you understand me?” He raised a finger toward where he thought she may have been, but it was a bit off the mark, pointing to the right of her instead of directly at her. 

He took a second to realize what he had just said and relaxed. “Sorry, I’m just. I’ve had a long day.” Of course, Alistair had a long day. Today was the anniversary of Mikael’s death. He didn’t talk about it. He never talked about it. Not even to Melody. “It’s a bad day for me. Memories of things best left to forget, you understand.” He fell back onto the couch, having half a mind to march to his room and hide for the rest of the night. “But I need you to understand that killing people won’t fix your problems. Killing the right people might, but you’re still going to have the same trauma. You might think it’ll fix you, but it won’t.” He swallowed, eyes a million miles away. “Trust me.”

—————————————————————

Zofia thought this must be how cornered animals felt. As he spoke, his ire seemed to grow. Moving as quiet as she could, she got back up off the couch and took several steps back to position herself in front of a window. He demanded the truth. Honesty. And yet he’d already said that the kind of beasts he kept caged away were ones that had lost themselves to bloodlust. If she told him the truth, there was a high chance she wound up puppeted into walking down to his shop and sitting herself down in his back room, waiting for some more deserving soul to have her life force siphoned away to heal their own. She’d go right back to being trapped. 

But he asked her to trust him. 

She hadn’t been able to trust anyone in so long. Not even herself. Some part of her still wanted to believe that maybe she could trust something. Even if it was a total stranger who’s dog seemed to like her for some inexplicable reason. 

“I couldn’t drink from hunters if I wanted to,” she muttered, eyes flicking around the space as she weighed her options. Out the window? Tell the truth? Risk the magic sigil on the floor? “Their blood is like acid to us.” Zofia didn’t know why she was explaining all this. Maybe she was just stalling for time. She understood having bad days, bad months, bad years- bad moments full of bad memories she’d love to leave behind in the dirt. But would rehashing them make any of this better? Would telling him what she’d done make either of their bad memories quiet down for a moment? Her eyes settled on Brutus, faithfully sat next to Alistair. Was she really about to tell him what she’d done because she trusted the dog? The vampire sighed. Maybe she had lost her mind. She pressed her back to the glass of the window, prepared to shove herself out it at the first sign of danger. 

“Three dead.” She said quietly. “If you think my state of mind is poor now, it was worse a few weeks ago. I’d been left for dead and I thought someone would have come looking for me but he-“ she swallowed, realizing there were so many missing puzzle pieces for him. “I had someone, before. They moved on in the months I was gone. They said they looked, said they’d tried, but they replaced me.” A chill crept into her voice, her eyes downcast. “I came back, and he’d moved on. And I…” she shook her head, not wanting to elaborate. “They looked like him. They weren’t. They never could be. No more dead after the hunter when I escaped and those three.” She held her breath, waiting to see if she’d have to run. 

_______

There was a long stretch of silence after Zofia told him the truth. He looked over to the window, able to see her outline because of the street lights that shone through, casting her silhouette. He could see light and shadow–Not well, but he could. He took a deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. It was a lot of information to swallow. “This man that you…” he trailed off, that wasn’t a good way to put it. Start over. “This man, is he in trouble? Do you think you’re capable of killing him?” Alistair needed to know the answer. He needed to know if he was boarding a serial killer or not. 

“Three,” he whispered, rubbing a hand over his face and shaking his head. Three was a lot. Hell, one was a lot, but he wasn’t about to admit that when he had a sizable portfolio of injured or dead people, all in the name of fixing someone else. “Three’s a lot, Zofia,” Alistair murmured, still rubbing a hand over his face as he took in the details. He lifted his head skyward, staring up at the ceiling for a long time. He said nothing, only stood there, lost in thought.

“I’m not innocent from killin’ people neither, but that doesn’t… that was in malice, not survival.” Alsitair's shoulders slumped, and his head turned back toward her as he continued to digest. “I’m not gonna make you one of my victims.” He spoke, deciding he needed to get that out of the way before he continued. “I’m not going to control you again unless you try to kill me or someone else important to me. Or another innocent.” He tilted his head side to side as if weighing his options. “Don’t. Make me regret helping you.” He finally said, voice serious. “Get help. Serious help. Talk to a therapist about what happened to you. Don’t tell them the vampire and murder details, but fuckin’ talk to someone. Because the more you bottle this shit up, the worse it will get for you.” His eyes were wide as he stared into space. “I…” he trailed off again, pursing his lips as he struggled to get out the words. “I’ll help you. But you have to help yourself, too.”“No.” The answer came out surprisingly easy. Even if she wanted to hurt Cassius, he had an Elder Vampire who’d destroy her before she could so much as touch a hair in his head. But she didn’t. She’d been scratching at her own hand like a tragic character from a Shakespeare play, wishing she could find a way to turn back the clock and take it back, or find some way to absolve herself of that sin. “No.” 

She watched him as he processed the information. Tried to determine if his breathing had changed, if he’d shifted, if his fingers had moved in any meaningful way. She waited. And waited. And then he said the words she needed to hear. 

Zofia’s tightly coiled nerves loosened a touch, slouching against the window. “I won’t hurt you.” She didn’t have the energy to sound offended or hurt at the implication that she’d aim for him. If they hadn’t met the way they had, it would have been possible that she’d set her sights on him for a midnight snack. But since she’d been back, he was one of the few glimmers of light she’d found. Him and that dog who sat and watched them both. They’d been kind. She needed that, after so long in the dark. She didn’t want to risk the little twinkle of light going away. 

“Okay.” It came out just above a whisper. She’d agree. If only to keep the speck of light. 

“Right,” Alistair spoke, un-crossing his arms over his chest and shuffling his weight from foot to foot. He could sense her mounting distress and unease. This man she spoke of wasn’t in danger so he could rest easy. “Come here,” he said, voice soft. He held his arms out, knowing that the last thing Zofia needed right now was to be pushed away further. He wouldn’t hurt her, and he wanted to show her that.

She’d agreed to go and see someone, someone that wasn’t him. He couldn’t help her like that. He wasn’t put together. He couldn’t even get to see a counselor, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. She’d see him as a hypocrite and not do what he told her to. His arms remained outstretched, and for a moment, he thought about dropping them. But if his hunch was correct, he expected her to reciprocate the hug he offered her.

Zofia stared at him. He was standing there, arms outstretched. His voice was gentle. Her eyes strayed to the sigil on the floor. She took a hesitant step toward him. He didn’t move to activate it. She took another step toward him. He made no move to control her. 

Trust me. The words rattled around in her chest before lodging itself somewhere behind her collarbone. She kept taking quiet steps toward him until she was a foot away. She didn’t move, didn’t breathe- waiting one second longer to see if he’d change his mind, to see if the little light would snuff itself out.

 He stayed, arms outstretched. 

Zofia stepped into the embrace, still poised to run at the first sign of a change of heart. It still didn’t come. She wrapped her arms around him, trying to settle into the feeling of letting herself be comforted again. The two words that had settled behind her collarbone felt warm. Like the truth. Like the right choice, for now at least. So she stayed, and trusted him. 

——-

Alistair began to channel magic into his grasp as soon as she embraced him. The tendrils, like smoke, began to converge towards Zofia. He could do it. All he had to do was cast. He swallowed, pushing Zofia away with a frown. “Step out of the circle,” he warned her in a broken voice. “And you should…” he frowned, quickly stepping out of the spell circle. ”You should probably find somewhere to live that isn’t with a necromancer that could control you.” 

His eyes flickered back and forth as he tried to get his head on straight. He didn’t want to control her, and every nerve ending in his body was screaming to cast that spell. “You have forty-eight hours to collect your things and find somewhere else to live.” Alistair gritted his teeth as he spoke, running a hand over his mouth. “I’m sorry, but it’s… it’s for the best.” He paced back and forth through the apartment, realizing he could be making a big mistake by not holding her back.

“I’m sorry, Zofia. You deserve to be in the care of someone who doesn’t have the potential to control your every move. I’m not good to be around. I didn’t think this through, and it’s on me.” He groaned, warring with the thoughts in his head. “If you need sanctuary at the shop, let me know. But I don’t think that you living here is a good idea.”

She was forced back, whatever brief comfort she’d found in being held quickly fizzling out like a candle in a rain storm. There it was. There it was. She smiled a bitter, sad thing. He’d witnessed the monster and no matter how many arrows the beast had in it’s hide, he was prepared to fire another volley at its heart. At her. 

Zofia moved out of the circle.”Save your apologies.” She didn’t bother to put any energy behind the statement. The words tasted bitter as they fell from her mouth. “I’ll be gone tonight. Won’t have to worry about whether or not the big bad beastie is lurking in your guest room any longer. 

The corner of her mouth ticked, and she stood up taller. “I don’t need to be in anyone’s care.” She hurried to the guest room and threw what little she had into a bag. She walked back out into the space, taking a good look at the man. He’d do it, wouldn’t he? Control her. And what then? She’d be trapped again. A different sort of trapped, but trapped nonetheless. And she had promised herself that she would not let herself be trapped again. 

“I hope you have a nice, long life, Alistair.” She said, anger coloring the edges of her voice. “Lovely meeting you Brutus.” She nodded to the dog. At least the dog had liked her. Before the necromancer could change his mind, she got out of the apartment as quick as she could. When she’d finally put a good amount of distance between herself and the flat, she let out a frustrated scream. Starting over, yet again.

[chrisgates]

Have Yourself A Merry Little Krampus...

Timing: Just after Christmas Location: Unknown, Krampus' Cabin Parties: @chrisgates and @zofiawithaz Triggers: head trauma and drooling Summary: Zofia and Chris are abducted by Krampus because they've been 'naughty'. The pair manage to escape but not without a visit from the werewolf, a scuffle and some good ol' fashion cast iron wielding. Hopefully next year, they make it onto the 'nice' list.

There were a great many things Zofia didn’t like about the holiday season this year. 

All of the sweet Christmas love songs that were constantly playing on the radio made her want to reach through the airwaves and strangle the dj responsible. If she heard one more caroler singing at her to ‘have herself a merry little Christmas’ she was liable to give them a merry little bite to the neck. Add on top of those normal offenses, Wicked’s Rest came with its own special variety of holiday insanity. 

Teleporting reindeer and sentient snowmen were the least of her troubles. Especially now that she’d been chucked in a bag and was now…

Well she wasn’t sure where she was exactly. Only that there had been jingling bells in the background of her kidnapping. And there was someone else there.

“Psst-“ she hissed in a whisper, trying to get the strangers attention. “Hey you-“ she picked up a little pebble and chucked it on the ground next to him. “Do you know where we are?

The last thing that Chris remembered before the lights were knocked right out of him was his walk to the motel to get the rest of his stuff — he didn’t think he could stay there anymore, even if he didn’t exactly have anywhere solid to go to. He just needed out. But he couldn’t do that, not when he was waking up to the sound of someone’s voice and a small, yet sharp tack of a sound that hit the ground beside him.

Normally when he woke up somewhere strange and unusual, he was naked, covered in blood and alone. This time, there was someone else there. It took him a second to register that this was not his usual bender when he started awake, his heart thrumming and eyes wide — though his breath was quick, his body was tense.

“No…” he drew out with uncertainty and rubbed at his forehead with a groan. His head hurt. “What happened?”

Zofia let out a string of muttered Polish swears under her breath before sitting up to take in there surroundings, even as fear gripped at her chest. This entire situation was all too familiar. But it wasn’t the same as before. Before she’d been alone. Before there’s been water dripping on pipes, and footsteps in the hall. This place was different. 

It was dark and dank, yes, but embers smoldered in a large fireplace. The crackles of the dying logs and their hushed voices and ragged breathing were the only noises this… cabin?- offered. Cold winter wind howled outside, the chill seeping into the space despite the fading fire. 

“I don’t know. I was -“ Zofia stopped herself from finishing the statement. Her previous activities had included drinking from a very pretty but incredibly rude young woman she’d come across in the bathroom of the Masque. She was also incredibly foolish, as she didn’t seem to realize she was on the menu in a place like that.

 Makayla or whatever her name was, had the audacity and unmitigated gall to insult the vampires appearance, asking her ‘where she’d gotten that fugly old dress and if she liked looking like someone’s grandmother’, complain about everything in the club, and then tell the vampire that she’d wasted her time so Zofia should pay for her offenses with free drinks for the young blonde and her friends. 

Needless to say, Makayla had been incredibly woozy from blood loss when Zofia had left her to head home. She had made it about half a block when she heard jingling and then- she was here. “I don’t know what happened to you… I was snatched on the street. What do you remember?”

Between not knowing where he was and the loop wound tight around his ankle, Chris would have been in a worse state had it not been for his company who seemed to be in the same boat. That didn’t stop the panic that started in his chest, however, only staved it off. 

What was he doing? “I was… Heading to my room..” Did he get hit in the head? Is that why it was hurting so much? “At the motel,” he clarified as he took in the room around them. The sound of the wind outside was slightly comforting. “I was just walking - I… I didn’t even see anything. I just heard… Bells.” He also smelled a lot, too, but he wasn’t about to get into that. Not when the only thing on his mind was getting out.

Chris looked down at his bound ankle — it’s not the same thing, don’t worry, it never even happened anywa- “We need to get out of here,” he spoke in a hushed undertone, though there was a hint of urgency to his voice, a trembling that followed his fingers when he reached down to try to wiggle one or two beneath the thick rope that cut into his cold, wet skin.

Somewhere at the back of the cabin, one could assume, came a creak. It was probably just the snow.

Zofia went to stand up and heard the soft rattle of chain. She looked down to see a cuff linked round her ankle. The panic that had seized in her chest turned to fury. Not again. Absolutely not. Letting out a torrent of swears that would have made her mother turn over in her grave,  she fished a pin from her hair and set to work on the lock. 

“Did you get a lump of coal too?” She asked, swearing still under her breath as she missed the pin in the lock and started again. Red eyes were locked on the cuff, determined to get herself free. 

“Already working on it,” Zofia grumbled, twisting the pin inside the lock. It popped open, and she shook her leg free. The vampire looked back at the young man, still very much trapped. He looked like a scared puppy, the poor thing. She sighed. She couldn’t just leave him. “Kurwa piekło,” she muttered before scooting over to set to work on his bindings. 

Cold fingers began to try picking at the tight knot, when she heard a creak. The vampire froze, waiting to see if another sound followed. Silence. She set back to work. “What’s your name?” She asked. 

The last time Chris remembered waking up bound like that was years ago, before the Great Blip, as he affectionately liked to call it. He remembered the ropes, the dimly lit room and all the metal on the walls. He remembered the cage and its too small of a size. It was claustrophobic. This room was not like that. It was small, sure, but the fireplace and various Christmas decorations, as old and decrepit as they were, made this kidnapping feel weirdly homey. 

“Yeah..” he urged himself to say amidst his desperate attempts at removing the knot. He had almost forgotten about that stupid little piece of coal. “What, do you think it has something to do with this?” The panic was still in full effect, but it did make room for a bout of curiosity. Chris had assumed that he was just being blackmailed, that someone knew about the horrible shit he kept telling himself wasn’t actually happening, but if she got coal, too, then maybe it wasn’t as targeted as he thought.

He glanced over, catching as she worked to remove her own chain with what looked like a hairpin. Of course she could pick locks. She looked cool enough for that. Meanwhile, he still fumbled with the rope — like an idiot. Maybe whoever grabbed him knew he’d fail. He was half tempted to start gnawing at it when her hands flew in and started on the knot instead. The sound they had both heard seemed to settle down, giving them a false sense of time that they may or may not have. They weren’t dead, yet, which seemed to be a good thing. Confusing and worrying, though, as it painted that their abductor had plans for them other than an immediate death.

He tried to hold two sides of the knot to give her a little wiggle room. “It’s Chris… you?” There was another creak. Why did it sound like a footstep? Chris thought his heart was going to pop out of his chest. 

“I don’t know,” she said through gritted teeth as she glanced around the space. “But I wouldn’t call anything in this damned town a coincidence. Everything is suspect.” There were holiday decorations scattered about the place- garlands and wreaths- but they all seemed… off. As though the holiday cheer they should represent had been replaced with ill omens. 

“I’m Zofia,” she said quietly as she worked, not willing to raise her voice much above a whisper in case someone else was listening. “Are you any good in a fight, Chris?” It was worth the ask- she needed to know if she’d be pulling all the weight in their little escape attempt. “Don’t lie if you’re not. I don’t want to be down an extra pair of hands because you thought it would be cute to show off.” Humor would have colored her voice had she not been so focused on getting him free. 

The knot finally started to loosen, when another creak sounded from within the cabin, along with the sound of faint sleigh bells. She quietly muttered a curse and worked faster, finally tugging the rope free from his ankle. She swatted at him, and pointed at a shadow that was cast on the floor far on the other side of the room. “Fight or hide?” She mouthed, freezing in hopes that whatever it was that had dragged them there hadn’t noticed they were free of their bindings yet.

That didn’t exactly make Chris feel any better. There was a lot of weirdness in Wicked’s Rest, but most of it he could brush off. But if she was saying that everything was suspicious, that there weren’t really any true coincidences to be found - well, that tickled his paranoia in the worst way possible. Coupling that feeling with the unmistakable sounds of a heavy weight shifting against old wood, causing it to groan and bend beneath the massive footsteps, sent his anxiety through the roof. Her words helped to ground him, even if the softness in her tone only came from tension.

Her question gave him pause and only served to worry him more. “Uh, no? I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t… If I had to, I guess, sure?” But not out the gate; Chris wasn’t an inherently dangerous person. He didn’t go out looking for trouble or tried to pick fights. He didn’t even know how to fight, not unless it was adrenaline that guided his hand, but any altercation that had ever crossed his path seemed to end in the same way - with him unable to remember it completely and someone either pissed off at him or terrified of him.

He did his best to help Zofia get the rest of the thick rope from around his ankle with hurried and shaky hands; he took note of the hidden spot she pointed out. “Hide,” for sure, not unless he had no other option. Right now though, they didn’t even know who or what was on the other side of that door. It was best to assess the situation first.

With as quiet a scramble as he could muster, one that might even make a mouse feel envious, Chris did his best to make it to the spot Zofia chose for them. Unfortunately, he wasn’t as fast as she was and managed to press himself against the old, stained and musty armchair that thankfully hid him from whatever it was that just creaked open the door. His entire body went stiff, head and back pressed against the aging leather, his breath held to keep it from shaking. A warmth flooded him, that uneasy feeling that liked to creep in during difficult situations, situations that reminded him of things he didn’t want to be reminded of.

His eyes turned to where Zofia managed to hide, wondering if he could spot her face, her eyes, anything to get a gauge as to who was in the room with them.

The vampire barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Just her luck, to be fortunate enough to be trapped with someone, but unlucky enough for that person to be no use in a situation where they needed to fight. Not that she was much use in a fight, typically. But desperate times…

Zofia nodded. Hide it was. She quickly, quietly slipped into a shadow in the corner and sat unnaturally still, ready to spring into action if she needed to. Chris, however, hadn’t moved as quickly. He was hidden behind an old armchair when the door swung open. 

The vampire wasn’t sure what it was exactly. But it sure as hell wasn’t human. Her eyes widened as she watched the horned figure stoop down to clear the doorway, before standing upright. It loomed over the space, horns scraping lines the ceiling. Zofia swallowed. A human she could take in a fight. Whatever that was… probably not. And unfortunately, it was heading toward Chris’s hiding spot. 

She had no time to think. She snatched up a loose piece of kindling on the floor and chucked it across the room, causing it to clatter in the corner of the cabin opposite of where Chris was hiding. The beast’s head swung around, refocusing on the noise. Zofia stared at her fellow escape artist. Hurry! She mouthed, waving him on frantically.

Of course it was coming right for him — whatever it was. He didn’t see it when it came in, wouldn’t dare sneak a peek, but he could tell how large it was. Chris would have that kind of shit luck, though. It was sort of a constant in his life and he even tried to act like it wasn’t. He couldn’t act like it wasn’t now, not with some huge, monstrous creature searching for them. The snuffling and scraping sent chills down his spine. It was angry they were gone. He would have mentally kicked himself for not making it to Zofia’s hiding spot if he wasn’t so scared. 

His heart was about ready to burst through his throat — at least, that’s what it felt like. It pounded and beat frantically behind his ribcage, terror gripping it, and him, completely. There was only so much space behind the chair where he could hide himself before a foot or hand or even the top of his head was visible. If the scraping on the ceiling was any indication, he didn’t really have much time. He didn’t know if luck felt bad for him or not, but it was then that he saw a flurry of movement and a rather convincingly distracting sound, he thought maybe the tides were turning.

Zofia’s frantic urging helped to spurn a bullet of courage that shot him from his poor excuse of a hiding spot and towards the only door that led in or out. He had one hand out, as if to tell her to follow him in turn through the doorway while the creature was distracted. There was no way he was going to spend another second in that room, but he couldn’t leave her. He wouldn’t.

It seemed the young man had found his courage. Zofia watched as he made a frantic beeline toward the door, waving for her to follow. The vampire didn’t see many options. It was either scramble after Chris and risk death at the hands of whatever was in the cottage with them, or stay put and guarantee death for herself. 

Not liking the certainty of death that came with staying out, Zofia hurried along behind Chris. Keeping her footsteps quick and light, she risked a glance in the direction of it, trying to get a better look at it. It was some sort of beast with hooves and a long tail. A long tongue licked over its snout, as though it were trying to taste the air to find them. It had some sort of pouch slung over it’s back, and it’s eyes -a bright yellow- scanned the space for what had gone missing. 

It was objectively the ugliest thing Zofia had ever seen. Well, maybe the second, if she included the chimera. The vampire forced her legs to move faster. Then, one of the old floorboards betrayed both of the prisoners and let out a long, loud, creak. Those yellow eyes swiveled and locked on the pair. Shit. 

Chris knew better than to look back. He didn’t want to know what the thing looked like, not if it smelled the way it did or moved the way it did or made the sounds it did. It sounded like a nightmare, like if it found him, it could easily scoop him up in its clutches and bite into his body, breaking him completely. He didn’t want to be its meal, he wanted to get the hell out of there!

But Zofia needed to go first; even though he didn’t know her and she seemed capable of taking care of herself, he wouldn’t forgive himself if he let her get in harm’s way because of self-preservation. That wouldn’t be right. His sister taught him better than that. 

No good deed went unpunished, though. It was almost expected, like this whole situation was written to play out like a stereotypical horror movie — Chris could never get through any of them before he was left a shivering mess under a blanket or hiding in another room. This time, he didn’t get that reprieve. 

He made the mistake of looking at it when Zofia made it to the creaky hallway. The monster was too close even though it was on the other side of the living area. Its mass made its short walk even shorter and it dragged a long arm across the floor while the other reached out with intent. It smell only grew the closer it got. Chris’ eyes darted from the thing chasing them to the doorknob in front of him and, without a thought, reached out to grab it.

The wooden door was pulled back with his falling, fearful weight. He felt the floor of the hallway meet his back when he heard the telltale shut of his success. It wouldn’t hold, but he hoped it would give them at least a second to get some space between them, even just a breath’s worth. But the hallway wasn’t very long and that door wasn’t very strong. They made the few steps it took to get to the mouth of the even colder kitchen before the door gave way with a sickening snap of its wood boards and groans of its metal hinges.

The kitchen seemed bluer, cooler, and lonelier than the golden warmth from the livelier, if intimidating, living space — but it was their only way out.

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Zofia darted through the door Chris held open for her. It may have been foolish of him to do the gentlemanly thing and let her go first, but at least chivalry wasn’t completely dead. Unlike what they would be, if the beast behind them got what it wanted. 

She heard the thud as her new friend hit the ground. She needed to think. Zofia doubted something of that size would feel much pain from her teeth, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to taste its blood anyway. She’d need a different weapon. Snatching Chris’s wrist, she towed him along behind her to- a kitchen. Well that was fortunate. 

She let go of the young man as she rifled through drawers and cabinets, looking for something, anything to carry as they made a run for it. There were surprisingly few knives. She didn’t want to think about how sharp that must have meant the monsters teeth were. She did, however, lay her eyes on a rusty old cast iron skillet. She snatched it up before turning back to Chris. “We need to go. Now.”

He was grateful for Zofia’s immediate hold on the situation—and his arm. Without it, Chris didn’t think his legs would work well enough to get him away from the danger fast enough. It was literally right behind them; his heart felt like it was in his throat just at the thought. If he was alone he probably wouldn’t have made it this far. He likely would still be tied up or cornered in the living room and made into a meal, for sure.

Speaking of meal, Zofia managed to find herself a decently weighted cast iron skillet. It would do some damage to any normal person, but to that thing? He hoped they didn’t have to find out. Still, he was happy to see something in their favor even if he wished it was a way out. He would have been happier if he didn’t feel a leg being pulled out from under him. The monster had him—it had him and it dragged him back towards the living area. 

Chris kicked and struggled against its grip, but he was dragged away from the kitchen and away from potential freedom. That thought set him off; it made the view of the fireplace and the smell of meat and musk fade into darkness, a familiar and, currently welcome, unconsciousness. The large, looming creature returned back through the now broken doorway to get to Zofia. But that was the last thing he heard before his body started to contort and break.

Just when Zofia thought she had everything under control, the demented holiday demon had closed its long clawed fingers around Chris’s ankle and yanked the young man back into the dim glow of the living room. “Sukinsynu, chyba sobie kurwa żartujesz!” She hissed. She couldn’t just leave him. Not when he’d been so nice as to hold the door for an old woman like her. 

The vampire moved quickly trying to keep pace with the beast and the terrified young man it had in its clutches. She’d just cleared the doorway when a loud snap sounded. She paused, frightened for a moment that she was to late, that she hadn’t been fast enough. Then it sounded again, and again, and she watched as the young man’s form struggled and twisted into something… lupine. 

Zofia could only hope he’d remember in this new form she was friend, not foe. Taking advantage of the distraction in the demons arms, she crept closer, twirling the pan in her fingers, prepared to strike. 

The horned monster didn’t get the chance to go after the vampire before she was already in the room to witness the changing. Perhaps it should have killed the wolf before it woke, but hindsight was, of course, 20/20.

Chris was glad it didn’t, but he didn’t like what ended up happening to him, either. Which one was worse? He’d end up thinking about it later. For now, he took a mental nosedive to make room for the wolf and its rage. With a wet snarl, it made a move for the cloaked demon, its teeth bare and clawed hands grasping. 

The hurried movement was enough to rock the monster off its hooved feet, but not enough to get it on the ground and in a more vulnerable position for biting. The beast pushed back, its strength surprising and teeth just as long. It seemed bigger somehow, but maybe that was the tall mane of hair or the spiraled horns that threatened to whack the wolf in the head. 

Its musk was overpowering; that was all the wolf could smell every time it snapped its teeth close to the wet, stringy, fur that covered its body. The wolf was not much better with its deformed hands and feet, but at least it had a cute nose. This thing just looked like a demented yeti. A demented yeti the wolf wanted nothing more than to rip the head off of.

It was like something out of an old movie, watching her young friend transform. He’d gone from fresh faced and terrified to bared fangs and snarling. Zofia swallowed. She wasn’t the only threatening thing in the room aside from the demon any longer. She gave a slow nod of understanding. 

It was terrifying the way they fought. Two forces of nature struggling against each other. She ought to have left. She ought to have taken advantage of the moment and ran far away as fast as she could. But this poor sweet man- wolf?- was fighting for his damned life. Zofia adjusted her grip on the pan. 

She waited until she saw an opening. The beast was swiping and snapping at her new friend, and its back was to her. Zofia’s eyes lit up. Winding up like a star player at the World Series, the vampire swung the cast iron pan like a baseball bat to the demon’s head, striking it like she’d hit a game winning home run. Good. The wolf could get away now. 

In truth, the wolf would have continued on until one of them was dead, but a good thunk to the head with a kitchen utensil caused its opponent to flee. It didn’t flee in the usual sense. The immense creature simply vanished with a disgruntled groan after it regained its composure from the whack. A sprinkling of snow was left in its place, but the creature had gone.

The wolf swiped at nothing but air, confused as to where the monster had just gone. It swung its massive head around the room and laid eyes on the vampire woman still in the room with them. No, she wasn’t the problem. The way she held the pan was questionable, but she was not the one who brought them there. 

It snarled at her, obviously frustrated with how that all turned out, but it was grateful nonetheless at getting to live another day. It then chose that unusually quiet moment to scrape and pull itself through a nearby window, its mass too large for the window frame; wood creaked and cracked and glass shattered and cut until the wolf was through, its nose keen to find the scent of the horned demon that abducted them.

Moments after the pan had found connection with the horned skull, it vanished into thin air. Zofia gaped, having been prepared to swing at it again. Instead, she was left locking eyes with the tawny werewolf that stood in the center of the room. 

The vampire stood unnaturally still. She prayed tow whatever forces might listen that he wouldn’t attack her. He’d been sweet- the last thing she wanted to do was hurt him. After a long, tense moment, the wolf snarled before turning to pull himself out the window. 

Zofia blinked, watching as the wolf left the space in an almost cartoonish fashion. The wolf- Chris- disappeared into the night, leaving a vaguely wolf shaped hole where the window had been. The demon was gone, and the vampire had nothing else to do. Her hand still wrapped around the pan (just in case), she made her way out into the night. Next year she’d be sure to be kinder, or at least less murderous. Or more selective in those she chose to feed upon. She would not be receiving coal again, and she hoped the wolf wouldn’t either. 

[checkermallow]

[This user googles hairless dog breeds.]

Not all of them. The Xoloitzcuintli is just as much a dog as any of the hairy ones.

... Aren't dogs meant to have fur?

[corpse-a-diem]

@zofiawithaz replied to this post:

No but when has the internet ever cared about propriety?

You're right. Unfortunately. This is why I typically avoid the internet. It's a lawless, unforgiving land. Also kids are mean on here

[lukas-dark-miracles]

@zofiawithaz replied to your post “Did you know"

what the actual hell is a dilf

Apologies for the rude language but it is "Dad I'd like to Fuck". People are trying to call me an attractive father aged man.