Night's Omen

Ah, the holidays. Mariah Carey and Michael Buble were pumped out of every department store speaker, Christmas decorations had been up since he first of November, and the city was full of that black road slush that one got when it dumped snow into a heavily populated metropolitan area. But, most importantly, it was party season. And this particular party at Bonne Chance came with an open bar, so of course, Virgil was going to attend.

"Can I get a Jack on the rocks?" he asked the bartender, leaning against the brown wood and marveling at how crowded the place was - and how uncrowded the bar was. He supposed that's what you got when half the people here couldn't even find a point to alcohol since they would have to drink their weight in it to feel drunk.

"Jack? God, I knew you were trailer trash," Juneau said, sliding up next to him. "Hey Darren."

"Hey Juneau," Darren said. "The usual?"

"Hey Darren," she replied. "Please."

"Hey - what the fuck? What do you drink since you're so judgey about my choices? Some girly shit? Let me guess, a Cosmo? Or, a Gibson? The fuck do you even want onions in your spirits for?" he demanded.

"Johnnie Walker Blue Label neat for the lady, and here's your Jack," Darren said, his voice flattening out as he spoke to Virgil.

"Well, fuck me," Virgil said. He was surprised, but also a little impressed.

"Sorry, Verge - I don't fuck men who drink gutter whiskey," she said sympathetically, reaching out to squeeze his hand as she did so. "See you around."

After she left, Virgil looked back at Darren, who was utterly stone-faced.

"Well, go on and laugh," Virgil said, gesturing at him with his drink.

"Will you still tip me if I do?" Darren asked.

"Shut up," Virgil snapped. Before he could say anything else, he smelled the scent of Rhys' perfume, and it was confirmed when he glanced up to see her in his periphery.
 
"I just had the most interesting experience," Rhys said, dropping herself into the stool at the bar next to Virgil. She set the ornate clutch down on the bartop and signaled for another of whatever she'd been having, then turned around in her seat to watch the crowd. How was it that these parties got pulled off every time without a massive fight breaking out, she'd never know. She supposed, in the end, they were all industry professionals enough to know when to keep their heads. And the ones that didn't - well, they weren't in the sort of company where they could possibly outmatch them all, so either they didn't attend or they took one night off from being disagreeable.

Virgil looked up from his drink, turning his head to look at Rhys. It was surprising that they were so candid with one another to him, even still. She was naturally diplomatic, which balanced out Severin's quiet rage nicely. "Oh yeah? What's that?" he asked. At a holiday party that was packed full of hunters from all over, he was sure that whatever her experience was, interesting would be a way to describe it.

"So the Belmonts are here and they've brought Raj with them. Laz put his foot in his mouth when he asked if Raj and the Rashanas knew eachother."

Virgil snorted. "Of course he did," he said, smirking a little. "Was it bad?"

"Well," she said, pausing to take a sip of the gin and tonic that had been refreshed for her. "As it turns out, they do know eachother. But Laz doesn't know that. I do, Libby does, and now you do, but he's so embarrassed by the social gaffe that he's retreated to the bathroom and won't come back out."

Virgil actually laughed at that. "So who's gonna be the one to tell him? Because if you came over here to send me into the bathroom after him, you're barking up the wrong tree, lady. I am comfortable and the bartender and I have a good thing going," he said. "Don't we, Darren?"

From behind the bar, the cat glanced up. "If I answer that honestly, are you going to stop tipping me?"

"Why is that the only thing you'll say when I ask you a question?" Virgil demanded, sitting back in his seat a little. "Come on, man. Money is the root of all evil, or haven't you heard."

Darren set a fresh drink in front of him, and rolled his eyes. "That's only something people who have money say."

Rhys arched an eyebrow at Virgil. "You of all people?" she challenged.

"What can I say? I guess living in your castle has changed me." He shrugged, trying to dodge her as she slapped his arm. "Hey! Not when I got my drink in my hand, woman. This right here is precious cargo."

They fell into a comfortable silence for a few minutes. Virgil turned in his seat to do the same thing Rhys was doing, and his eyes wandered to where Juneau and Sev stood. They were with a group of people, but he noticed that there were glances to be had between them. "Huh," he said flatly. He thought back to the altercation a few weeks prior where Sev had slapped Nissa across the face. Granted, she had said some pretty awful things, to all of them, though Juneau had taken the brunt of it. He'd almost broken the brother the fuck off, but Sev told Nissa to get the fuck out of the house, and in the interest of not wanting that to be the particular day where they saw who was the strongest fighter, Virgil had gone with her.

That wasn't all that had happened, of course. He'd had some choice words for Nissa, too. It had been a bad time all around, though it seemed like things were mostly back to normal. He supposed that powder keg had been building for a while; probably long before his arrival, if he were a betting man.

"What?" Rhys asked, finally registering he'd said anything at all. She followed his line of sight, and nodded. "Ah, that."

"Yeah, that," he said. "They know that can't happen, right?"

Rhys inhaled, then drank until the ice clicked at her teeth, and set the drink down behind her before turning her body to face Virgil. "It never will happen," she said matter-of-factly. "Because they know the rule, but they also take the why behind it pretty seriously."

"At least now I know why he popped Nissa in the face," he said, emphasizing the word sarcastically.

"I thought you'd known, honestly," she admitted.

"Well, I don't do so good with hints. You need to basically hit me with a blunt object of information and intent, because otherwise, I stay way the fuck over here in my lane," he said, gesturing to himself. "Still though. Must really suck."

"We all make sacrifices for this lifestyle, Virgil," she told him matter-of-factly. "Sev isn't any different. Trust me, I wish I could see them off to some happy ending, but - "

"Shit, you don't gotta remind me, Rhys. In this life, there are no happy endings. The best we can hope for is a swift end. But happy? That's just downright unrealistic." He turned back to the bar, unwilling to process all of the depth and nuances of the discovery at the moment. It would kill his buzz, which was pretty hard to maintain as it was - both because of what he was, and because he'd built a hell of a tolerance.

"At least I don't have to worry about you," she said serenely. "It's quite clear you see Nissa as a sister. Maybe even more of a sister than I do, and I'm actually her sister," she added, a short, harsh laugh following her statement. She stood up, giving him a pat on the shoulder. "It's an ugly, complex family. We're so happy to have you."

"Happy to be here," he replied, nodding as she stepped away from the bar and back into the crowd. He looked down at his empty glass, and then back up at Darren.

"I don't really think money is the root of all evil," he said flatly.

Darren shrugged. "If it is, call me Satan, because my rent doesn't pay itself." He paused, a twinkle in his green eyes. "Another gutter whiskey, sir?"

"Shut up, Darren," he snapped.

Virgil sat at the kitchen table, food spread out before him. He couldn't understand what anyone in the house ate, because he never saw them do it. He firmly believed they were vampires in hiding at times, or something else. He'd asked Nissa if it was part of their magical pact with the devil that made them never hungry, and she reminded him that the first time they'd met, he'd watched her eat Burger King so fast he thought she was going to throw it up. That was fair, but he still thought it, and they, were weird. Still, it meant more food for him, and in a fridge bigger than anything he'd ever seen outside of a movie, and a person chef (!!) onsite, he was taking advantage before this fever dream came to a violent end.

His face was half-stuffed when he heard yelling from outside, and he glanced over through the floor-to-ceiling window that gave a view of the garden outside. He saw Juneau on the phone, though he couldn't understand a single thing she was yelling. When she realized he was in the kitchen, he didn't miss her smoldering glare as she hurried away, voice dropping to whomever she was no doubt berating on the phone.

"So pleasant," he muttered to himself.

"She actually is quite lovely, when you get to know her," a voice from behind him said. It made Virgil jump and nearly drop the sandwich in his hands, and he turned around, giving Rhys an annoyed look.

"Y'all gotta quit doin' that shit," he huffed. "You're gonna make me choke on my food, and then what? You'll get another dog, and this will get even more clustered up." He shook his head and went back to his food, but paused for a second. "And I don't doubt she's lovely. She just ain't lovely to anyone who ain't you or your brother," he added.

Rhys opened her mouth to speak, but Virgil suddenly put down his sandwich and turned in his chair to look at her. "And anyways, what the hell language is she speaking out there? Is that Hungarian or something? Because she sounds like a damn terrorist," he said. "Oh, so you do eat."

"I'm sure I don't know why you're surprised that I need to consume food to survive, Virgil," Rhys said, her clipping voice making him smirk at how sensibly she always spoke. "But I assure you, I do. I just don't feel the need to lay every item in the pantry out across the table to do it." She pointed at him with the fingers that held a rather plump strawberry in them as she spoke. "And furthermore - she's definitely not a terrorist. She's speaking Inuktitut." When he held his hands out a little and gave her a look that he had no idea what the fuck she meant, she sighed. "Inuit. Eskimo."

"Oh, yeah we don't say Eskimo anymore," he told her. "But, I'm pickin' up what you're puttin' down. Can I ask who the hell she's yelling at like that? I mean, I've seen her mad, but she's never really yelled."

"Ah, yes," Rhys said, nodding. She sat down in the chair adjacent to Virgil, resting her arms on the table. "Fact-finding, are we? No, it's fine. I don't expect you two to speak amongst yourselves," she said, waving a hand as he opened his mouth to protest. He wanted to point out that Juneau wouldn't even find herself in the same room with him let alone hold a conversation.

"Hey, she's royalty around here. I'm just the huntin' dog," he said, a lopsided grin taking some edge off of the remark, despite the truth in it.

Rhys snorted. "You really know so little about her, it's almost comical. Virgil, she's not royalty. Far from it. She grew up not much differently than you, I'd imagine." She plucked a piece of lint off of her black top casually, and looked back at him, her dark eyes focused. It was the first time she'd ever indicated she knew anything about Virgil, so she wanted to see how he'd react - and to his credit, he really didn't.

"You want me to say I'm surprised? Come on, Rhys. Scruffy old marine suddenly follows your kid sister around like she's hung the moon, of course you two looked me up. Hell, I'd look me up, and honestly, I probably wouldn't let me anywhere near Nissa in a normal world. But this world, it is not normal."

"Quite right, it certainly is not," she agreed.

"Now," he prompted, leaning back in his chair and pointing at her with his fork. "Tell me about Balto out there." He cut into a waffle inelegantly, ignoring as the fork loudly scraped against the plate.

"Well, I'd prefer she tell you herself, but - " she paused as Virgil made a noise - "BUT, I know that isn't the case. And you're more likely to reach out to her than she is to you, so I guess I can offer some insight. Juneau spent much of her time up north, obviously. Her pack ranges between the Northwest Territories and Alaska. Her lineage goes quite in line with ours, which as I'm sure you know at the very least, is atypical."

"Right, yeah, I read somethin' about that. So what makes her pack different?"

"We don't know. Blood magic, probably. Far before either of our times, that's for certain. At any rate, she had a very humble life. She wasn't destitute in the same ways you were, but she was close. This is a prestige position. It is her entire life. It is what she was raised to do, and it is what she will die doing, because to die any other way would be an utter embarrassment to her lineage."

"Jesus," Virgil said. "The fuck kind of family she got?"

"Not a nice one," she said pointedly. "True, her father didn't come home drunk and beat on her mother, - "

"Like mine did," he interjected.

"Like yours did, yes. But she was raised with an expectation. And she must fulfill that expectation. And your existence calls her existence into question. So now, she's on the phone with her parents, who are no doubt telling her that she has single-handedly brought about the apocalypse by allowing this to occur." She sat back, raising her hands in a shrug.

"The fuck?" Virgil said, obviously confused by the notion. His brows narrowed. "She hasn't got any more control over this than I do, or you - or any of us, for that matter. Why the fuck would they think she does? Shit, my daddy was a mean drunk, but he wasn't stupid," he muttered, shaking his head in disbelief.

"So, while you to are very much strangers, I think perhaps you've gotten a little more insight as to why Juneau is - "

"A raging bitch?" he offered helpfully.

"Territorial," she said sharply.

"So what, now you told me all this you think everything is magically gonna be better between us? Rhys, let me tell you right now, I strike out a lot with women, and I promise you as God is my witness, me approaching her and telling her I know what she's been through is gonna get me punched squarely on my nose, and I don't know if you noticed darlin', but it's already been broke a few times. I'm not lookin' for a world record." Virgil set his fork down. He'd lost his appetite, finally. "You're out of your damn mind, that's what," he continued. "Kitchen bigger'n my whole ass trailer, and you want me to give that psycho an olive branch? Woman, you are somethin' else," he said, shaking his head firmly.

"An olive branch? Don't be a prat," Rhys snorted. "If you want to get her to talk to you, throw a fucking axe. She's from places on this planet most people couldn't survive a few months in. Talking will absolutely get you hit, and as much as I'd like to see her bruise your face, I prefer how it looks without blood all over it."

"Aw, Rhys, you're gonna make me blush," he teased.

She pushed her chair back and stood. "And with that, I leave you to it. Have a good day, Virgil. Do try not to get fat, " she called over her shoulder. "Nissa shouldn't be able to outrun you."

"Lady, you haven't seen fat 'til you come to the bar down where I'm from, I promise you," he shot back as she left, but it wasn't any use. Rhys was good at not being baited. "Throw an axe," he muttered to himself again. "Where would I even get an axe to throw?" He thought about it for a minute, then got up from the table.

"Hey, uh, do you know where a guy can get a throwin' axe around here?" he asked, scratching the back of his head while he spoke to the man who was already cleaning the table. It still weirded him out that they had people to do it, but who was he to judge.

"The weapons room, probably, sir," the man said, and he said it in such a tone that told Virgil he'd asked an obvious question.

"Right. Weapons room. Shoulda known. Because that's a normal room to have," he hissed, walking away from the man before he got the urge to shove him.

"What do you mean, 'she has a Black Dog'," Juneau asked, her typically direct manner somehow more biting than it usually was. Rhys had just informed her that Nissa had established a companion and that he was currently en route to them. "How? When? How?" she fired, her rapid-fire questions made to be more aggressive as her entire posture changed and she began advancing on the siblings.

"Now, Juneau, you know I don't - " Rhys began, diplomatically, before Severin cut her off.

"We don't fucking know," he said bluntly. "Everything you want to know, I also want to know. Believe me, I'm not keen on having another thing to be worried about right now any more than I've already got." He gestured sharply with his hand at her, effectively truncating all of the things she wanted to say for the moment.

Rhys sighed. "You two deserve eachother," she muttered, turning on a heel and leaving them to sit and stew together in confused anger.

---

Virgil hated flying, and so he'd elected to drive the way from Missouri to New York, where the family was. His family, apparently. He'd always known that it could happen one day, but nothing that anyone had told him had really prepared him for being Called. Called, with a capital C, because it was an Event. As a boy, his father had always spoken against it. He made it sound like something straight out of those stupid books about sparkling vampires, where once you were Called, you'd lose your free will and become some mindless thing. But that wasn't the case at all, at least not as far as he could tell. He flicked a cigarette out the window of his Dodge Ram, hoping it didn't land in the bed of his truck on his duffel bags. Nissa had told him to pack like he was moving; when she'd seen that he'd only had 2 bags in the back of his truck, she'd been confused. He'd tried to explain that the military had taught him to pack light, but the truth was, he'd grown up in a trailer a stone's throw from the Ozarks, and honestly, he wasn't in the habit of keeping a lot of shit around.

He'd lost track of the time he'd been driving, but he knew Nissa had already landed. "You should have flown with me," she texted him. "You'd be home by now."

Home. What even was that?

"Nah kid, a man and his truck are not parted so easily," he'd told her. Their relationship had yet to truly be established; they'd met, spent a few days together, and then she'd told him that her siblings were coming to New York, and she was meeting him there. Which meant, of course, he was meeting them there. He was vaguely aware they already had a dog, but he'd never met another one who'd been Called, so he didn't know what to expect. She hadn't given him much in the way of an explanation either, but it wasn't wilful withholding - Nissa didn't know.

This whole situation was a clusterfuck.

---

"He's driving, I don't know when he's supposed to be here," Nissa said hotly, after having been asked by Sev for about the fiftieth time where the man was. She was seated at an oak table, as far from where he stood as possible. She had a journal open of a long-passed Van Helsing, one who had encountered the uniqueness of her situation, and she had been trying to glean information from it, but she couldn't if her brother kept pestering her.

"Call him and ask," Sev said, each word emphasized to show how much he cared about the fact she was annoyed at him. It was like having two of Rhys around, if one of them was younger, American, and entitled without an iota of knowledge to her own ability.

"Sev!" Nissa snapped. "He'll get here when he gets here, okay? Fuck," she muttered, looking up from her book finally and at her brother.

"Don't talk to your brother that way," Juneau interjected from her spot across the long table, raising her eyes but not her head and giving her a sinister appearance. She'd been pouring over books herself ever since this had come about, unsatisfied with the litany of "I don't know" responses she kept getting. She already didn't like Nissa, and in part, it was because she'd was unbound to her. It had given her a strange insecurity about her own purpose, if not to be bound to the Van Helsing family. Juneau's bloodline had always been bound to them, for as long as she had been told, anyways. This situation was playing on childhood fears about being ousted from what was considered a high station and relegated back to a cabin in the great beyond of Alaska to live out her days with no family to call her own. She locked eyes with Nissa as the girl set her jaw, as if daring Nissa to start that fight.

"He'll get here when he gets here, dude. He knows the way. He's fine," Nissa said after the tense silence had lingered. She thought maybe he'd say something to Juneau about her attitude, but no, of course he didn't. It was just one of the many ways she was shown that she didn't "fit" with whatever had been going on here. She didn't wish Sev had stayed dead, though; on the contrary, she wished he hadn't died at all so she could just have lived her life with dormant magic that would have never been activated.

When Sev opened his mouth, Juneau slammed her book shut, the sound thunderous in the quiet of the massive study. "Sev for fuck sake!" she yelled.

They were all interrupted as Rhys opened the door, unknowingly (or maybe not) stopping what was about to be a huge three-way fight between them. "Someone's pulling up the drive," she informed them.

---

"Well god damn, I say god damn," Virgil said to himself as the house finally came into view. He knew it was going to be fancy judging from the mile long driveway (that was paved), but he had no idea it was a damn castle. Nissa hadn't told him that. "Virgil, you sure do know how to pick 'em." He parked the dusty black truck in the circular drive at the entrance of the house, wondering to himself if he'd won or lost the lottery on this one. Fancy was never his thing, and though he wasn't apprehensive that he wouldn't fit in, he was keenly aware what fancy saw when it looked at him. He'd been aware of that his whole life, thanks to his environment.

As he got out and walked around to the side of the truck to grab his bags, the massive doors opened. He had expected it to be Nissa, but it wasn't. He could hear her voice behind the door, but he watched as the woman forcefully shut it, deliberately putting time between she and the people on the other side. She had already descended the steps when the rest of them came out.

"Hey," she snapped. "Farm boy. This is my family. Do you understand?" Boy, but she was mad - and unafraid. She was very quickly in his personal space, and despite the height difference, seemed to lose no dignity in looking up at him. It still felt like he was being looked down at.

"I'm not here to steal your family, Duchess," he told her, merely arching a brow before continuing to go about slinging his bag over his shoulder. He reached past her, picking up the second one, and pulled it over the side of the truck, comfortably gripping it in his hand. She didn't move a single inch, he noticed. If she was trying to frighten him, it wasn't working, but he was impressed by how fiercely she came at him all the same. He was an outsider. She was doing what she was supposed to do, without a single question as to the why.

"But," he warned, dropping his voice a little. "You ain't gonna keep me from mine - so I suggest you get used to me," he warned her. He looked past her to where Nissa was rushing down the stairs, pushing past Sev and Rhys feverishly to get him away from Juneau before she started a fight. "Because that little thing right there? That's mine. Not yours."

He stepped out of her personal space, walking towards Nissa with a smile. "Well hello darlin, you did not tell me you were a princess, too," he called.

Juneau stayed where she was at the truck, facing the opposite direction and seething with rage. "We'll see about that," she hissed.

Whitney was seriously in the zone. She'd gotten a bunch of actual real adult shit done during the day, and it was a Friday, and she deserved a drink. For once, the other gaggle of Fae and various magical friends weren't in her company - Puck and Blaise were up to something, and Roxy wanted a piece of whatever mischief they were getting into, but Whitney had declined. She was moody, for whatever reason, as pixies tended to be, and so she found herself craving time on her own more and more. An entire weekend with them, plus whoever they dragged along (Marisol, Cassidy and Reese, she suspected), just sounded like more than she wanted to commit to.

At any rate, she blew right by Hellcat's Hollow, fully intending to keep moving along and get a drink from a bar that was significantly less populated with Supernatural beings, but stopped just short of passing the last window. It wasn't completely dark yet and whoever was on shift hadn't pulled the shades down to block the tables closest to the windows from view. She walked backward a few steps, and then her mouth fell open with surprise. Like a jackrabbit, she was darting back towards the entrance, nearly mowing down the man checking IDs in the foyer.

"Whoa there, turbo," he said, holding a hand up.

"Relax, Cujo. I'm far from the legal drinking age," she said.

The big man raised an eyebrow at Cujo, but didn't comment on it. Instead, he smirked a little and folded his arms over his massive chest. "Alright Tinkerbell, go on, then."

They stood like that for a minute, Whitney's hand on the door, and his arms folded, both sets of eyes locked in a sudden staring contest. Whitney grinned after whatever she'd been thinking had rattled its way around her brain long enough to let her decide what retort she wanted to give back. "You're alright, Fido. You're alright," she said. She went inside, leaving Cerberus at the podium, shaking his head.

"Fucking fairies," he muttered to himself, though unlike the majority of people who said that near-constantly, he didn't say it with malice.

Whitney got inside and looked to where she'd spotted the thing that made her re-route her path from chosen bar to newly chosen bar. With a purpose, she marched over to where the man sat, and dropped down into the empty booth seat across from him, sliding her bag off of her shoulder as she did so and depositing it next to her

"What's the story, morning glory?" she asked, eyes bright.

"Holy shit," the man replied. "Whitney Herald.  I would have thought you'd have long moved on. How can a city as small as this one contain the sheer chaotic energy that you and your sister bring?" He sat back in the booth a little, smiling at her.

"Well, imagine my surprise when the last time I talked to you, you were in Seattle with no plans to come back, and then I clock you sipping on a happy hour beer at random," she countered. "Seriously, Dez, what brings you? I thought you'd left this place far behind in the rearview."

Dez signaled to the waitress that he wanted another round, with a nod from Whitney that she'd just take one of whatever he had. "I thought so, too," he admitted. "But, things have a funny way of working out, I guess. It's good to see you. You look - well, radiant, of course. Must be all that natural charisma," he teased.

"So do you," she said, a nod to the growing up and filling out he'd done over the last few years. "You go to the gym much out there or what? I thought FBI was all brains and no brawn."

He chuckled. "Guess I'm double dipping, then. I actually transferred back, though. I'm going to split my time between lecturing and working with a new division within the bureau."

"New division?" she parroted, brows raised. "I'm intrigued."

The drinks arrived and they both tapped their bottles together (carefully). "It's just getting feds a little more involved in the - ah, unique challenges that this rapidly changing environment present."

"Like fairies?" she asked playfully.

"Shit, you guys are low on the spectrum right now," he scoffed. "I don't want to talk about work though - I literally transferred because the normal work became a little tiring in day to day life."

"I'm guessing you mean tiring as in fatiguing you, not boring you," she clarified. "Well, allow me to be the first to officially welcome you back, then." She was changing the subject obviously so as not to press him for details about something he'd plainly said was causing him strife. It might have been a little surprising if someone didn't know her well, but Whitney could turn the antagonism off every so often.

"Thanks, Whit," he said, and he meant it. That was just one issue on top of many that had been piling upon him for years, honestly, but he wasn't sure coming out of the gate by saying "I have so many problems" was a good look. Still, it got a little tiring. There was a comfortable silence as they both drank and let themselves just exist in the moment, but it soon passed. "I hope my return home is as well received by everyone else as it is for you," he mused, and though he said it with a twist of humour, there was apparent truth that it was a concern.

"I'm going to assume by that statement that I'm the only one who knows you're back," she guessed.

"Well, my family does, obviously. My brother was thrilled to see me, but he became inconsolable when I left. It's going to take a lot of reinforcement with a visiting schedule to try and curb that," he admitted. "He thinks I'm going to just leave again. It super sucked watching my mom try to get him to calm down. It's kind of how I ended up here. Comfort at the bottom of a bottle and all that." He paused. "Don't worry, I'm not turning into an alcoholic. I just needed a change of scenery from something where people were depending on me to one where I could just sit and exist for a while."

"Makes sense," Whitney said. "As much as I don't want to be a downer on our happy reunion, have you considered talking to someone? Like, someone qualified, I mean," she added. "You can talk to me but I'm absolutely not qualified to give you advice on the complexities of your life. Pixies are like, the worst at getting our shit together."

Dez smiled, the remark unexpectedly causing him to laugh more than normal in the sudden tonal shift from depressing to funny again. "Noted. And, I'm sure I'll get around to it, I just want to get settled right now. But, if you're not busy, I could do a few more drinks," he said, giving her an open invitation to sit and exist with him.

"Nope, my whole night is yours," she offered. "I might need to step my drinks up a little, though," she warned.

"That's fine, just so long as you catch me up on what I've missed in the meantime."

"Deal," she replied. She looked across the room where their waitress was in the middle of serving another table, and cupped her hand to her mouth. "AYO GIRL, LEMME GET A DOUBLE VODKA REDBULL!" she yelled, broadcasting her order across the entirety of the establishment. Step one of catching up was obviously demonstrating that she herself had not fundamentally changed in any way that mattered. After all, stability was paramount, was it not?

"How long do you plan on staying?"

Thibault didn't even look up from the book he was reading, which Ash couldn't see the cover of but might have been anything from a deep-dive into some philosophical theory or a trashy romance.  His lips moved, tone sounding distracted enough that whatever it was, he was apparently involved in it.  Probably the romance, then.  "As long as it takes."

"As long as what takes?" he demanded from his desk, where he'd moved from the demanded bed rest finally - bed rest that he'd fought as soon as he was able, but hadn't really stuck to very long at all.  His gunshot wound ached just from sitting up, let alone moving, but he just couldn't stand it any longer. 

He'd gotten the other man to flick his eyes up, at least, and Thibault's eyebrows cocked up at him like he really didn't get how Ash could even ask, but he did close the book in his lap, tilting his chin up as he regarded his nearly-lost protege.  It had been a close one.  "Where would you like me to start?  As long as it takes for you to heal, for Danielle to be trained in the responsible use of her new power, for my satisfaction that your sudden blow-out battle with Lucifer doesn't draw more attention than you can handle, or that it doesn't draw too much for your current state.  I could keep going, but honestly, Ash, you've been foul-tempered, but you're not stupid."

Almost like he wanted to be contrary about his temperament lately, he clenched his jaw rather than comment, but he wanted to argue.  All of those reasons were fair enough, but they meant that if Thibault was determined to wait them all out, he was going to be in town for a long time, and Ash had been hoping that the most recent visit would have been the last he'd see of him for a few years.  He hadn't put together yet the fact that Thibault had come back before his fight with Lucifer, but it would hit him eventually; he'd had a rough week, and he was pretty sure Thibault was camped in his office to read to make sure he didn't do anything to exacerbate the extremely slow healing injury.  He gave a frustrated sound after another moment, tossing his pen down and pushing his chair back from the desk, though he regretted some of that immediately after with another unpleasant sound.  Thibault merely watched him, expression unchanged. 

"Say it, I know you want to.  I can read you almost as well as you can read me, don't forget."

"Will it help if I tell you that you should be in bed?  A firestone injury that severe is not going to take kindly to you continuing to dump energy like you did.  You're lucky to be alive."  There was concern there, which Ash had known there was, but Thibault had a way of sounding flippant while also feeling sincere.  It was the strangest thing, but it worked. 

"So you keep saying."

"Do you think it's unlucky that you survived?"

Thibault asked it so carefully that Ash stared at him dryly, his look clearly calling the man an idiot even if he didn't say it out loud.  "No, I think if there was any luck involved, Lucifer wouldn't have shown up there at all, or he'd have sat in an empty house until he got bored and moved on to some other psychotic idea.  Hell, I'd be satisfied for him being stuck inside Tim long enough for them both to have died.  And I'm not dumping energy.  I haven't since I woke up."

The older of the two regarded him at that, like he was still in doubt about the answer to his question, but Thibault had decided that if Ash could drag himself back from the brink that he'd been at, then he must still want desperately to live, and so he didn't dwell on it too long this time around.  He might keep wondering about it on occasion, but he'd have to worry if the near-death experiences became a habit and resolved not to until then. 

"No, you're just stubbornly refusing to rest and let it heal."

"I hate being shot."

"Well, maybe try not to next time, and definitely not with your own bullets," Thibault advised, though he smiled just the slightest bit at what he read as a petulant tone.  Ash would disagree, of course, but that was hardly important. 

"Thanks, I'll try that," Ash shot back, but he leaned back in the chair, looking at his father-figure for a little while.  "You haven't read me the riot act yet."

Thibault snorted, rolling his eyes.  "As if it would help.  I thought you were well past the phase of doing something just because I wouldn't like it."

Ash also snorted, looking as unimpressed as Thibault usually got from him.  "That sounds a lot more like you than me."

"You have your moments, as you've so perfectly demonstrated recently.  Waltzing right in the front door and taking Lucifer head-on was about as stupid as it gets, but you went on to nearly get yourself killed and then create your first triste, which is itself difficult enough that it's been known to kill one or both parties.  Which were you, stupid or suicidal?"

"Neither."  Thibault made a scoffing sound, tossing the book from his lap to a side table, where Ash could see that it was indeed a romance.  Called it.  "I just didn't care, Thibault.  Not sure I do even now, not like I did.  I'm just so fucking done with the bullshit.  It's always something, and I tried so damn hard to do the right thing, to not be the asshole and help people."

"Ash, you've helped countless people, you have an entire house you've built here--"

"Yeah, and every time some nasty comes knocking, it's all diplomacy and trying not to piss off everyone else that might be paying attention.  I'm sick of it, sick of playing defense and waiting to see who gets fucked up in the process.  I claimed neutral ground here and all the assholes around us are just searching out the loopholes.  I'm done."

"Well, what's the alternative?"

"I don't know.  I just.  I know that I'm tired, and I don't think it's just the gunshot or anything recent, so don't.  You felt it when Celeste and Dani died, I know you did.  I think that just finished the job, but it was already wearing on me."

Thibault nodded, because he had felt it, and that had been what had drawn him to the whole mess from the start, even if he'd arrived too late to do much more than clean up.  If he was honest, he'd have never attempted to take Lucifer on alone, and wouldn't have previously tried to do so even with Ash, so he wasn't sure what he'd been planning to do when he arrived, though now he had other ideas.  It wasn't that giving him pause before speaking, though.  Ash sounded tired, and he felt it to Thibault across the room. 

"Okay, Ash," he said softly, but he nodded again.  "I told you, I'm staying, and I'm here to help.  It'll take more than your bad moods to chase me off.  We'll establish the new status quo."

It was Ash's turn to nod, looking down at the paperwork he was going through, which just made him sigh and close everything up.  That was enough of that for one day.  "I need to eat.  Both kinds."

"Not to worry, I'll fetch something.  Go make yourself comfortable somewhere that isn't that awful desk."

"If you see Danielle, would you...I don't know, just check on her?  She's pissed at me.  She thinks she's hiding it."

"She's not at all.  Don't worry, I'll parent your little triste, too, just like I have been."

"Thank you," he said, even if he didn't like that he was too fucked up, and also on her shit list, to do the job himself.  He didn't know that Thibault didn't think a romantic couple should have that sort of relationship, but that conversation would be coming later.

"She'll come around, it takes time.  You still haven't grown out of the moody phase."

"Bite me, Thibault."

"Highly inappropriate, my boy, not that you could handle me in your current state, anyway."

With that tossed over his shoulder, Thibault gave Ash a shooing wave and went off to do as he'd promised.  Ash wasn't sure whether to be grateful or even more annoyed.

"Yeah, thanks man," Julia said, taking the pack of cigarettes from the dude behind the counter at the corner store. She walked outside and dipped her head, one already in her mouth, preparing to light it with one hand shielding it against the breeze, when it happened. It felt like her head was about to fucking explode suddenly, and she hit the concrete hard. If she'd been human she probably would have busted a kneecap on the drop, honestly, but as it stood, the pain was all in her fucking head. She dropped her cigarette and her lighter, hands pressed to her temples as her mouth opened in shock and pain. Through the radiating sound in her head, she realized that it wasn't someone hitting her with some LRAD, it was someone screaming mentally, and it was just like, loud enough that she picked it up. What bothered her, though, was that she knew the flavor of that scream.

She got up off the ground, pushing past the few people that had stopped to help her up, and bolted down the street, running like Forest fucking Gump as hard as she could, darting in different directions as she felt it get stronger and weaker depending on where she went. When she'd actually zeroed in on it, she looked the building up and down, and grit her teeth. She might have known the flavor of that scream, but she really knew this MO. She debated on going through the back, but decided this was a front door job, and mangled the glass door on her way in. She used her celerity to get her up the stairs, and was glad for it - kicking open the door from the stairwell into the construction-cluttered room of the building ready for demo, she found her two most favourite people in the entire world leaning over a hunter that she recognized. That's why she knew the flavor of the scream -it wasn't the hunter they had pinned down, it was who was doing it.

  Jeremiah crouched over the blonde, a wicked-looking knife in his hand, blood already coating the blade. "Well, I got a finger, you wanna go for something more in depth?" He looked from the redhead and down at the hunter, who he'd muted, but done nothing else to. He just didn't want to hear her yelling - which hadn't exactly worked, because she knew how to project her thoughts. Oh well. He'd deal. "Hey, blondie, you thought about having kids?" He looked back at the redhead. "We could go Poughkeepsie and carve her womb out. Hunting's not a life for children, anyways." That's when the door crashed open.

"Why is it that every time there's some fucking trouble, it's you two?" she snarled.

"Because we're awesome?" Scarlet asked, looking up at her. She rolled her eyes. "Come on, Jules, get with the program." She looked back down at the other vampire. "Kids suck, but I think playtime's over."

"Is that mine?" she yelled, spotting the knife in Jeremiah's hand. "Oh, you motherfucker." She didn't go for Jeremiah though, she went for Jo. The former hunter had fully expected that Julia would go after her comrade first, and hadn't jumped away from the hunter's body yet, which was exactly what Julia had banked on. It'd been many years since they'd seen eachother, but in that time, Jo had only gotten crazy, and Julia? Well, Julia got practical.

"Let her the fuck go, you little shitweasel, or I'm gonna blow your girlfriend's fucking brains out all over myself and wear her to dinner," she demanded. She had Jo in an iron grip, the barrel of her gun pressed firmly against her pale temple. "Jo, so nice to see you again, by the way," she said, labor on her words as the vampire struggled in her grip. Julia made a point of keeping her off balance just enough that she couldn't try anything fancy.

"It's Scarlet, you fucking hag," Scarlet snapped. "And he's not my fucking boyfriend."

"Right, Scarlet," Julia said, her low voice dripping with sarcasm. "Sure could have fooled me - HEY, fuckface, I said get the fuck away from her. Do you think I'm fucking with you? And quit trying to use your power on me, you fucking loser. It doesn't work."

"I realize that," Jeremiah said, standing slowly. He stepped back from Aurora a few feet, his hands up to show that he wasn't doing anything. He had tried to use his abilities on Julia, and it should have worked, because she was younger than he was, but for whatever reason, they didn't. "Don't remember it always being that way, though," he said snidely, smiling. "Give me Scarlet, and we'll just... be out of your hair."

"Give you her, huh? What are you her fucking maker?"

Jeremiah chuckled. "No, I'm not. But Jericho is, and he's not really one I'd fuck with, so...."

"Yeah?" Julia asked, squeezing Scarlet to get her to stop squirming. She crushed her collar bone in the process, ignoring the vampire's angry cry. Oops. "The way I hear it, your line's been put on notice. Pandora got eaten by a big fuckin' tiger," she teased.

"And didn't Bacchus get himself stabbed? By this little blonde hunterino, right here, if memory serves?" Jeremiah asked. He put his hands down, and stepped back towards Aurora's mess of a body. "Don't you want some revenge for dear old dad?"

"GET the fuck away from her, Jeremiah," she commanded. "And besides, my daddy's still upright and walking around."

"Not for long," Scarlet hissed.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Julia asked, keeping her attention on Jeremiah. He backed away from Aurora again, and had his arms folded, only watching.

"It means, you idiot, that Bacchus made a lot of enemies. It's not gonna be us, but it's gonna be someone eventually." She had stopped struggling, and began to laugh. "You guys have no fuckin' idea what's coming. I saw it. It's dark and big," she whispered.

Julia threw her at Jeremiah, Scarlet laughing wildly as she felt the push. She followed immediately with two shots, just in time for Jeremiah to give Aurora her voice back and the screaming to start. She was certain the first one hit, but it only struck that idiot Jeremiah in the arm as he grabbed Scarlet and they vanished. "Fuck," she hissed. She holstered it, but only because she didn't trust tweedle-dumb and tweedle-dumber to come back.

"Hey, you're safe now, you're safe," Julia soothed, dropping next to Aurora's body. Fuck, but had they done a number on her. At least they'd only gotten a pinky, which they'd left thank god. What else had they done? "I need to see the damage report, kid, sorry," Julia told her. She was already at work ripping her flannel shirt up to use as a make-shift bandage for her hand. Another one of her old hunting knives was buried into Aurora's femur. Shit, she thought. I'd be fucking screaming too.

"Just go ahead and keep screaming," Julia muttered, taking back her soothing words from before. Aurora was mostly done screaming, though, thankfully, but Julia much preferred it aloud than in her goddamn head. "You really hit me with that hail on all frequencies," she said, glancing over at her as she pulled her phone out to notify Victor of an incoming body.

"Yeah," Aurora managed. "Fucker stole my ability to talk, or make any noise at all, so I just... I don't know, went into my head." She grunted, looking down at the knife. "Fuck me," she hissed.

"Yeah, well, it's a good thing you did," she said to her, before directing her attention to her phone call. "Hey, Batten, I've got one on the way. Yeah, she was one of ours - Snow. No, two vampires. Mostly surface, except for a broken femur and a missing finger. I said mostly. Yeah, I'll be there soon. No, we're jumping, I can't move her. We're a few stories up. Okay, bye." She put her cell phone away, and then looked at Aurora.

"Alright, are you ready to do this? Have you ever done this before?" she asked. She meant phasing, of course.

"No, but I don't really fucking care right now, to be perfectly honest," Aurora grunted. "Just get me the fuck out of here."

"Okidoke," she said. "Give me your hands. Well, not that one, the good one," she added, taking the girl's hand. She held it tightly and then the sensation of the world moving hit them, and they were in the infirmary at Crimson, greeted by Victor.

"The floor, Julia?" he chided. "Now I have to move her."

"Sorry, Victor," the vampire snapped. "It's a fucking imprecise science." She stared at him as he made no move to help. "No, don't worry, I got it," she said, waving him off. "Don't want you to throw out your back." She scooped up the injured hunter as carefully as she could, setting her down on the gurney. "Alright Snow, this is where I get off the ride. Do you want me to call anyone?"

Aurora watched with pin-pricked pupils as Victor prepared some shots and began reviewing her medical files. She'd have to be under for them to fix the thing in the femur, and he figured she'd prefer to be for the re-attachment of her finger, as well. She also needed several hundred stitches, judging by how they'd cut her arms and torso up. Why on earth had Julia called those surface wounds? He'd have to remind vampires that humans had a different definition of surface.

"Hey, Snow!" Julia said, snapping in front of her. "She's going into shock."

"Yeah, I'm working on it," Victor said briskly.

"Call?" Julia prompted her again.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "No, there's nobody."

"Ooookay," Julia said. "Victor, I'm gonna - " and she pointed to the door.

"Yes, good, get out of my way," he said, waving a clipboard at her as the medical team came in. He started barking orders about anesthesia and pre-prep for surgery, and Julia was out the door. She didn't know whether to believe her when she said there was nobody to call, but she knew that the girl had a reputation for making friends, so she figured she should at least let someone know.

"Hi, can I talk to Devraj Rashana?"

Who better to call when you'd found a hunter tortured than the torture expert?

Danielle had thought that she'd known anger before. Now, well. Well. It wasn't that she was mad that Ash brought her back; on the contrary, they'd never discussed it but Danielle had never imagined herself dying, and honestly, they knew it would come up eventually. She was mad about some other things, though. She knew that he hadn't really had a choice in making her like him. Tallulah told her the damage was too far gone, and honestly, she was surprised she'd even been brought back at all. Tallulah was, too. It had taken a lot out of her, and she both wasn't sure she couldn't do it again and not keen on trying. What he had had a choice in, though, was almost committing suicide to do it. That's what pissed her off.

Sure, being ripped from the afterlife had been disorienting, if such a word even really fit what it felt like, but she'd gotten past it. It had taken a while for her realities to align again, where she wasn't feeling like she was standing with one foot in and one foot out of the afterlife, but she'd gotten there. After what seemed like a month or two of sleeping alone, she'd finally returned to Ash's bed, able to - really, to wake up with him next to her and not want to harm him. He had been so fucking reckless. And she was trying not to lose her shit at him, but it was probably going to happen sooner or later. She shouldn't have been so easy to read now that he was a triste, but Ash, Danielle, and Thibault all were directly from one another, and that meant that she could be read by both of them clear as day. She'd had to work very hard to try and bury her emotions, which was fucking unhealthy, but it also meant she took advantage of the way she sat right in Ash's blind spot in terms of, he wouldn't see what he didn't want to see.

Because Danielle had been repressing the inevitable conversation and onslaught of emotion that was going to come on that side of the house, she'd been focusing her attention elsewhere. Namely, all of the other manner of things that were going on in that goddamned bar. For starters, Thibault.

"You need to back off of Chloe," Danielle said, letting the door slam behind her. To his credit, Thibault didn't jump - hell, he didn't even react. He'd felt her coming, because unlike Ash, he could see how she felt.

"Oh?" he said, not even turning his head. He sat atop the picnic table, one leg drawn up, with his arm rested at his knee. He held the cigarette pinched between his fingers and was looking at the cherry, brows furrowed as he tried to determine if he'd just had a gnat fly into it. He wasn't so much about smoking dead bugs. "Why's that?"

Danielle stayed where she was for the time being, arms folded beneath the light grey cardigan she wore. "Because. First, she's an employee, and one of Ash's favourites, and mine, and we don't want her quitting when you inevitably piss her off. Second, because you're a fucking triste and you know better," she said, her voice betraying that the second bit was the part that actually infuriated her. "You can feel how she feels, and you can anticipate shit. It's just on the other side of mind-reading, Thibault, and you know it."

"Alright, Danielle, the first point I'll gladly concede to, but the second point, that's a lot of bullshit," he said, and he did turn, but only because she'd irritated him with that. "You make it sound like I'm some lech lurking in the shadows to take advantage of the girl."

"I mean," Danielle said, gesturing broadly to him.

"Is that what you think this is? Your whole two months spent as a triste, and you've got it all figured out, then?" he asked. She noticed his accent had an uptick when he was annoyed. She'd started to hear it in conversations with Ash; usually the point where he got more British than he had been the moment prior was when Ash really started to hammer on him and he'd walk away.

"You hit on everything that moves," she said, rolling her eyes.

He held up a hand. "Not everything," he reminded her. "You know I stay away from gypsies."

"Chloe's from the Volos clan, Thibault," she said flatly.

"Yes, but she's quite removed, if memory serves," he retorted. "Listen, Danielle, I don't want to do this dance with you every time you see me speak to her, so I'm going to only do it this one time, okay? Chloe is a big girl, believe me. She's quite a bit more emotionally educated than you are, that's for sure - and don't even start with me there, Cher. You are his blind spot, not mine. And I love you like a daughter because I, he, a son, but you've got far less rope than he does."

"She's also a fucking infinite food source, if memory serves," Danielle snapped.

"Danielle, don't come out here and harp on me when we both know you're really just mad at Ash," he said, flicking his cigarette into the butt can with ease. "I like Chloe, and I like talking to her, and if something changes in our dynamic, it's none of your business. Why don't you do us both a favor and go yell at him instead of trying to lecture me? It's rich that you'd even come out here making accusations of people taking advantage of others emotionally when you're the most advantageous of us all," he said, holding his hands up.

The back door banged against the wall as it opened. Ash's massive form stuck about halfway out, and by the look on his face, he'd heard that.

"You, quit trying to fuck my employees," he said harshly, pointing a finger at Thibault.

"And you. We need to talk." He made solid eye contact with her, and she felt like she'd been caught doing something she shouldn't have. God damnit. At least he hadn't pointed.

The door slammed shut again, leaving Thibault staring at Danielle, an amused expression on his face.

"Shut the fuck up," she snapped, and went inside to find Ash, who no doubt would have opinions about what he'd just heard.