Night's Omen

Nicolette nudged her tape recorder closer to him, blue eyes fixed on the thing momentarily as she made sure that it was on. She glanced up, then laughed. "I guess I should have asked first, are you good if I record you? I'll be taking some written notes, but I don't want to have to try and recall all this from memory. I'll just fuck it up."

"I thought you were the best?" he teased. "It's fine," he said, holding a hand up as she opened her mouth to defend herself.

"You know, I honestly never thought I'd be doing this interview. You've had quite a wild ride over the last year or so, haven't you?"

He laughed, then, and leaned back a little in his chair. "You know, compared to the last two-thousand or so, it's been pretty eventful."

"Well, thanks again for agreeing to see me. I'll admit, I didn't know what to expect. I've talked to vampires who are a couple hundo, but never as old as you are. Well, was? How do you count your time?" It seemed her questions had started, as she sat, poised at the ready with her pencil to jot down anything that she wanted to specifically go over.

"I count all of it, vampire and otherwise. The time in-between was a little weird, though. I guess I could count that more towards the human clock. And, if we're being totally honest here, being a - a ghost, I guess - was probably some of the most peaceful time I've ever spent. Aside from the company, obviously," he said, referencing the hunter he'd accidentally bound himself to.

Nicolette raised her brows. "Why do you say that?" From all her experience, being stuck in that limb was said to be awful. You were unable to go back, unable to go forward; you just drifted, aimlessly, watching all your loved ones pass you by.

"Heh." He sat up a little, fingers drifting to the pack of cigarettes in front of her. "May I?" he asked, and then took one when she gave him a nod. He struck a match expertly and lit the cigarette, then began to speak as he shook the match and dropped it into the ash tray. "Do you know what my line is cursed with?"

"Cursed?" she repeated. "Wait, your bloodline is cursed?"

He laughed. "I don't mean to repeat myself, but really, I did think you were the best. How did you not know this?" he asked, and this time he was serious. "Do your lessons not include things like this?"

Nicolette made a face, but he wasn't wrong - she was the best, as told by her position at Diamond, anyways. Technically, she would be the best they had in the field currently; at their school, people probably had far surpassed her. But active, and in the thick of it? Nicolette was the go-to girl. That's probably why his revelation that bloodlines were all cursed kind of gave her a brain freeze, she supposed. How was something like that not common knowledge?

"I guess that's not something that anyone's ever told us," she said, shrugging. "A lot of our knowledge comes directly from living among whoever it is we're researching. It's not an exact science. And, to be fair, nobody, to my knowledge, has ever been granted audience with the person from whom something originated."

"That's fair," he acknowledged. "I would feel safe saying that most of them don't even know their bloodlines carry a curse. They only know that they were turned, and they exist in their current-most state. But, my line is one-hundred percent cursed, with obsession."

"Obsession?" Nicolette had to stop parroting him. She wrote something down, anyways. "Can you explain?"

"Usually the line's issue will stem from its creator, at least that's how it seems to us," he said, referring exclusively to the vampires that had originated lines. "And truthfully, I know only the creator of one other line, so I have limited experience, here," he reminded her. "But yes, I was turned after - " he hesitated. He thought of how he'd desecrated the temple of the oracles when they'd told him that Deyanira would never be his. He'd gotten the absolute shit cursed out of him by the gods, that was for sure. He thought of what they said to him, and then blinked back into reality.

"After?" Nicolette asked, eyes bright with curiosity.

"After a temper tantrum," he settled on. "And my curse, along with the gift of immortality, was obsession. It was a compulsive need to consume, but it wasn't just to feed - every vampire has that compulsion to feed, just as every other creature does. It's what we do, as life on this planet. But the hunger that I felt was different. It causes us to fixate on something - or multiple things, I don't know who really begot who begot who, you know - but the gist of it is that we're all a little... passionate about things. And as we get older, the passion turns into a dangerous addiction, and drives us. I mean, look what happened to me." He snorted.

"But, okay, as I understand it, if you aren't aware, I've actually got a chart of what we think your family tree is. Would you want to see it? Would that help put some of this in order for you, I mean?" she asked, hopefully.

Bacchus' dark brown-black eyes positively gleamed with interest. "You do? Yes, I'd love to see it," he said, posture more attentive than it had been a moment prior. He watched as Nicolette got out of her chair and walked to her bag, producing laminated sheet that had been rolled up and secured with a hair scrunchie. She smiled sheepishly as she slid the scrunchie off of the sheet, securing it on her wrist, and shook the paper, rolling it out across their interview table.

"Well, isn't this something," Bacchus said, amazement in his murmuring.

"Here," Nicolette said, handing him a dry erase marker. "You can make notes on any discrepancies you see, and I can update them when I get back."

He accepted the marker, and then immediately corrected a few things. Orpheus, for one, was dead, and so he drew a large X over his name, jotting down the exact date and time of his death. He glanced up at Nicolette. "I was there for that one, you know," he said, smirking. "Man, I hated that guy." He looked back down, and then straightened out a little.

"Okay, so Orestes, here," she said, pointing, "I know him. He helps the guilds out quite a bit. He's not crazy, not as far as I can tell, anyways."

Bacchus made a face, and it clearly said that she couldn't have been more wrong. "His obsession is control over himself," he told her, tapping the end of the marker on the table for emphasis. "That kid is a ticking time bomb. He's over two-thousand, just a few hundred shy of me? Yeah, he's fucking crazy, he's just hiding it well. Maybe because of his sire, I don't know. She's dead, so I can't rightly check in on her, but she always was a little more, ah, level-headed than I was. His brother, though - that's one of Orpheus' gets, and I don't need a chart to tell me that. Thanatos is worse than I ever was, and that's saying something." He paused. "Maybe I should get Aurora to kill him next."

"Would you?" Nicolette asked, totally serious. "She killed you, and she killed Orpheus. That has to count for something."

"For Thanatos? No, not a chance in hell. She's - " he paused. Not ready? Too ready to die? Too important to him? "She's taking a break from her big game hunting," he said finally. "Besides, she's already stolen a kill from an ancient, I don't think I'd recommend she'd steal another."

"How? Who'd she steal a kill from, I mean?"

"Oh, Orpheus and I have a long, sordid history. Friends, then rivals, then finally I basically killed everyone he ever knew, stole his wife, and he's spent the last few thousand years one step behind me, waiting for the right moment to strike. And, he waited too long, because someone beat him to the punch." He snickered. "And he was hoisted by his own petard. He was so mad about her stealing his kill that he went to confront her about it, only to get a knife in his chest for his trouble. He couldn't let it go," he said. "See? Obsession."

"Yeah, no, I got all that, but who would she be stealing a kill from if she killed Thanatos? Orestes? Dude wouldn't hurt a fly, and as far as I can tell, he's done his best to distance himself from his psychotic brother. It's the only reason the guilds even agreed to work with him."

"Oof," he said, borrowing something he'd heard Aurora say a few times. "Listen, you need to write this down, or make it a note in his file or whatever you guys have on him, but Orestes cannot be trusted like that. And I promise you, there will come a day when he kills Thanatos. He's working up to it, has been for a long time now. He's not my fledgling directly, but I'm their origin source. I know my children better than they know themselves."

Nicolette sat down on the table now, looking away from him as she digested that information. She pulled a cigarette from her pack and lit it, but let it burn in her fingers after her first drag, using it more as something to do with her hands as she processed what he'd said. "So what you're saying is," she said, lightly tapping her thumb to the butt of the cigarette, "Is that you know specific, intimate details about every Bacchite in your line?"

"Yes," he said firmly.

"Even though you're human now?" she asked, turning to look at him again.

"Yes," he said again, making direct eye contact with her. "So tell me, what do you want to know?"

Aurora snapped her head up suddenly, coming to on her bed. Her mouth felt dry, like she'd been eating cotton or something. And her head was splitting, which she was aware of now that she was upright, a palm coming to press against her left eye as her skull behind it throbbed. The room was dark - darker than she remembered it ever having been, before. She slowly began processing her surroundings, and became dimly aware that someone was in the room with her. Her free hand moved across the bed, which was made (she had passed out? on top of the blankets), but it came into contact with nothing. As her eyes adjusted, she saw something darker than the dark of the room; a person-sized shape just at the edge of her bed.

"Bacchus?" she whispered.

"Guess again," the voice said.

---

The wine had been her idea. She was standing in the world food store, looking at the rows and rows of it they had on display. She waffled between the whites and the roses, looking up little blurbs about each on her phone. She was a white wine girl by trade; she preferred lighter alcohol, if it had a colour at all. Truth be told, clear was her favourite, and it was widely known that Aurora had a taste for vodka. Bacchus wagered she craved it like a vampire craved blood. It wasn't a good thing, though. For humans, that just made you an alcoholic. She kept it under control, at least, not as bad as some had been (Autumn), but still, there were nights where she'd kill a bottle and be dead to the world, leaving him to wander her apartment unchecked.

"Those are all disgusting," he informed her, causing her to nearly drop her phone. She gripped the shopping cart, looking at him with murder in her eyes.

"You have got to stop doing that," she hissed, careful not to look like the crazy bitch in the wine aisle talking to herself.

"I'm just saying," he replied, defending himself. "You don't want those. You want these." And he walked toward the racks of reds, waving his hand with flourish.

Of course he'd like red wine, she thought. Probably reminds him of blood. "Alright," she said aloud. "Which one should I get?"

He took so long picking one out that she'd opened up solitaire on her phone and played through several boards before she heard him make a noise of approval. Rolling her eyes, she glanced up to see him pointing to a bottle towards the middle of the shelf. "That one? Alright," she said, her tone suggesting that she didn't trust him. She got two bottles of it, though, so clearly she trusted him enough with her money. She supposed if she didn't like it, she could dump it, and just gift the second bottle to Irulan, who did appreciate the reds.

Once they were back at the apartment, Aurora got her corkscrew and immediately set to work wrestling with the bottle.

"Okay, this is painful to watch," Bacchus finally said, reaching out as though it would do any good. "You're going to break the cork. Who taught you how to open wine, you little barbarian?"

"My sister," she confessed.

"Well, tell your sister she's awful," he replied smoothly.

"Fine," she said, throwing the tool down on the counter with a loud clack. "You do it."

He laughed, but after four months together, that stung a little. "You know I can't."

She gave him a look that he found to be rather cryptic, and then reached out swiftly, grabbing him by the shoulder. "Try now."

He stared at her, and then reached for the corkscrew. He had to shelve a gasp as he felt the cool metal in his hand, and looked down at it for a moment, unable to hide his amazement. He looked back up at her. "How long have you been wondering if that would work?" he asked. When she didn't say anything right away, he changed his tone. "Rory," he said, dropping his voice a little.

"A while now, okay? And don't fucking call me that," she snapped, releasing him from her grip. The corkscrew fell out of his hand, hitting the counter again.

"Alright, alright, do you want me to open it or not?"

She sighed, setting her jaw, but nodded and put her hand back on his shoulder. He popped the cork on the bottle expertly, then set the corkscrew down, lifting the bottle to his nose.

"Oh my god, it smells just like I remember," he said, closing his eyes. He set the bottle back down before she decided to let go of him and cause it to crash to the floor in a sharp, red mess. When she released him and went for where her wine glasses were, he leaned against the counter, unable to help himself from reminiscing.

"You know, Bacchus was the god of wine," he said, and he saw her shoulders lift as she laughed a little. "Hey, you can laugh all you want, but it's true. Remember what I told you - myths are based in some truth. Oh, my family had vineyards as far as the eye could see. In the summer it was all you could smell."

"Fermentation? That must've smelled awful," she said, disrupting his reverie with her usual brand of disappointing observation.

"I guess you'd have had to have been there," he said. He looked at her thoughtfully, then nodded. "Come on, get your glass. It's a nice night, we should go onto the patio."

"Yeah, I'll be there in a minute," she said.

He walked away from her, then to the large glass door that led to the spacious patio. He had to admit, her apartment was pretty nice. The inside was a little small for his taste, but he was used to a literal manor, so he couldn't really say he was comparing it fairly. Still, the outside area was generous, and she had a pretty decent set of furniture that overlooked the area behind the complex. He walked through the door, not even bothering to try and attempt to open it - he'd managed a few times to open random things in the apartment, the latest of which was a cabinet, which she walked into, not having expected him to be capable of it. That had been a fun fight.

He heard the door slide open and turned around, yet again breaking from his thoughts. He saw she had the bottle and two glasses, and raised an eyebrow. "What's that for? You bring a backup in case you get wine drunk and break one?" he teased. She had to admit, she did have a penchant for breaking her glassware. She was only clumsy when she was drunk, though, as he well knew by how her knife had pierced his heart so perfectly.

"No," she said, and offered no exposition beyond that. "Come on, sit down."

He sat, wondering when it was that he'd become so accustomed to doing what he was told. Being in this state, though, he remembered so much of when he was human; sometimes it overwhelmed him, actually. Coming back from her failed vacation had been the first time he'd really bothered to acknowledge his life before he'd been turned, and then tonight, with the telling of his family's trade. It seemed that, more than the strange event that had turned all of the vampires human for that brief few days, whatever situation he found himself in now forced more of it up to the surface.

As though she'd read his mind, she nodded to him a little. "What else do you remember from before?"

He smiled, looking out at the landscape and away from her curious face. "I remember that I could hear my father calling me from what seemed like miles away. I remember how the sun felt, and how my mother's laugh at the dinner table felt like everything would be okay, regardless of what outside turmoils surrounded us." He paused. "I remember not being so mad all the time, not being so compelled by something in the back of my head, telling me that I needed to consume - " he stopped talking, and shook his head. Then he looked back at her. "I remember everything, if I know where to look for it."

She poured herself a glass, and then poured a second one. "Where do you go? I mean, when you're not here?"

"I don't know," he said honestly. "I'm just... I don't know, floating in some black ether. It's like the place between two realities. It's - " he paused, trying to think of how to describe it. "It's like if you dove into deep water, and turned off all the lights. You just exist. It's only you, and your thoughts."

"I would never want to just be alone with my thoughts," she said, and though she laughed, he could tell it wasn't because she found it funny.

"None of us want to. Least of all, me. But, I don't know." He sighed. "It's like this is my punishment, I guess. For two-thousand some odd years of total havoc and debauchery. Now I'm doomed to just be alone with my thoughts for eternity."

  She interrupted him by holding a glass out to him. "Take it," she said.

"I can't," he snapped. He was in his feelings, apparently.

"Yes, you can," she said, her tone equally biting. "You say that you can't all the time. Do you ever hear me say I can't? I'm a fucking fraction of your age, asshole. I'm a blink in the eye of your time on this planet, and you never hear me say I can't."

He bit back a derisive comment about how she'd told him that she "couldn't" earlier when he'd reminded her that she needed to call that ex of hers to try and build that connection back up. There was quite a lot she refused to do.

"Take. The the fucking. Glass." She reached out, and slapped her hand down on his thigh, digging her little wolverine nails into his leg.

"Ow, god damnit," he said, sitting up abruptly.

She leaned in, shoulders hunching. It made her look absolutely predatory. Her voice, though, was much softer. "Take the glass."

He huffed, and then picked it up. He half-expected her to release him again so he'd drop it on the table, or even better, let him go and grab him a second time to make it break on him and cover him in the thick liquid - but she didn't. "Is this what you want?" he asked, brow arched. There was no playfulness to his tone; he was genuinely curious.

"Drink it," she told him. "Go on. I'll drink with you." And she lifted her own glass with her left hand, raising it. "Cheers, my dark companion."

He lifted the glass to his lips, still not trusting her to not be fucking with him. He wholly assumed she remembered the cabinet to the face, and while she did, and absolutely had something planned for retaliation for that, this wasn't it. After another beat of waiting to see if she was trying to fuck with him, he drank it.

"Hooooly shit," he breathed, taking the glass from his mouth. "After so long as a vampire, you wouldn't believe how differently this could taste."

"I thought being a vampire enhanced all your senses?"

"Well, yeah, for a while. But after the first thousand, they dull. Anything over that, it's basically a fist-fight to feel anything," he said, pointing at her a little with the glass as he spoke. He drained it of the wine, and then set it carefully down on the table. "That's the shit they don't put in the books."

She leaned back in her chair, her hand sliding off of his leg and going to the arm rest on her own chair finally. She looked pensive, and drank her own glass dry, but held onto it, tapping it to her chin thoughtfully. "Is that why you were so crazy?"

"Yes, Aurora. That and the all-encompassing hunger that drove itself into the forefront of every thought I had, but yes, that's a large part of it." He shifted in his chair, sitting up more. "We're not meant to live that long like that. Suspended in some stasis, like a living portrait. Why do you think everyone in that god-forsaken place was positively mental? Some of them, like Deja, embrace it. Others," he said, thinking of Justinian, "have learned how to navigate it so well you'd never be able to tell. But, bloodlines have something to do with it, too. Mine, unfortunately, like I told you before - madness is just part of the gig. Once they hit a certain age, it's inevitable."

She was listening to him, but she wasn't looking at him. In fact, she got up, wine glass still in hand, and went to the edge of her balcony, looking down into the trees beyond the property. When he went to say something, she held a hand up, indicating for him to be quiet. He obliged, but he got up anyways, trying to see whatever it was she saw.

"I think I saw someone down there," she said.

Bacchus didn't respond, but inwardly cursed himself. Sometimes being a vampire had its perks; being a ghost certainly gave him no way to reach beyond with his fine-tuned senses and see or hear any better. She'd really fucking gimped him, alright. He looked at her, and she looked back at him.

"Let's go back in," she said decisively. He held a hand up in accord, and gestured that he'd follow.

Once inside, she checked around her apartment, but found nothing out of sorts, and circled back to their usual spot in her living room. "Everything looks fine, I guess," she said, shrugging. "Maybe it's just the wine. I never drink this shit," she admitted.

He snorted. "I could tell by the way your eyes lingered on the two-dollar moscato," he chirped.

"Well, luckily I had you to direct me, Mr. Wine Connoisseur," she said, pouring herself another glass. "Fuck, these bottles don't hold much, do they?" She picked it up. "I've got like maybe another glass in there. Haven't even had this much wine since... " she trailed off.

"Since?" he prompted.

She shook her head. "It's just been a while." Since Jillian hired me to kill you, she thought inwardly. She was somehow uncomfortable admitting that, right then, and so she drowned her thought with the glass she had, and then the bottle behind it. She was smart enough to have watched how Bacchus had opened the first bottle, and so opening the second went far more smoothly than before, and she killed that, too, as they sat on the couch and watched an old rerun of jeopardy.

She couldn't remember what they had been talking about when she finally realized she was too drunk to carry on, and told him she'd continue the argument in the morning. She ambled to her bed, kicking off her shoes, and laid down on the soft blankets. She wanted to get under them, but she felt like she was too hot to bother, and knocked out almost immediately.

---

"Thought I'd lost you, up there in the woods. Fortunately, the guy at the desk did me a favor," the voice said to her in the dark. "What I can't figure out, though, is why you thought I was Bacchus," he spat. The light flicked on at her bedside lamp suddenly, and Orpheus revealed himself, now directly next to her. "Feel like sharing?"

"Fuck," Aurora said.

Orpheus grabbed her by her hair before she could back away, dragging her backwards on the bed. Christ, but he had a reach on him. She kicked out, making solid contact with his joint, but it was like it hadn't even connected with the way he reacted. It seemed to just make him more mad, actually. She screamed, but he just laughed over her, saying something about how she could scream all she wanted, because nobody was going to hear her. Fucking vampires and their fucking magic.

"Tell me, how did it feel?" he asked. He let go of her hair briefly, enough for her to try and sit up, but then he put a hand on her throat, squeezing so hard that she could only make a squeaking sound. She clawed uselessly at his hands. "How did it feel when you killed him? I need to know."

Behind him, she could see Bacchus appear, like he'd been summoned, and looking completely fucking horrified.

Orpheus didn't notice that she was looking past him, though, and went right on with his interrogation. "Do you know what he did to me? Do you know how long I waited for the perfect moment to kill him? Before you just waltzed in and stabbed him in front of God and everyone?" He squeezed harder, and Aurora felt black spots dancing around her vision, around the blood that was splattered across her face from a few light slams to it.

Behind them, Bacchus was absolutely rabid. He took a swipe at Orpheus, but passed right through him, and realized that there wasn't enough time to maneuver around him to actually hold onto her and try and hit him at the same time. Instead, he did the only thing he could think of, and reached for her bedroom door with all his might, yanking it as hard as he could. It slammed, loudly, like he'd been trying to get it to do for the last month in attempts to scare the fuck out of her. Of all the fucking times for that trick to work, though.

Orpheus jerked around, his grip faltering at the sound of the door slamming. He knew he was in the house of a hunter who had murdered an ancient, and regardless of how powerless she might not have been at the moment, he was more than aware of the company that she kept. He'd been staking the house for a while now, and though he'd seen the other hunters come and go, she seemed to be mostly alone. Had he miscalculated? He was not up to the task of dealing with a fucking Phoenix, or whatever else she had up her sleeve, that was for sure.

When he loosened his grip, it was just enough time for Aurora to break away from him. She thrust her hand under her pillow, wrapping it tightly around the same blade she'd used on Bacchus. In one motion, she drove her arm away from herself and directly at him, hitting him dead center with a furious yell of last resort.

Orpheus didn't react for a second, and her heart dropped. She'd missed. She looked past him to Bacchus, closing her eyes in silent apology. Orpheus stood, and she prepared for what was surely going to be the last thing she ever saw, but then he faltered, and fell backwards on the floor. His skin began to turn grey and decay, and his body sort of withered until it was hard to recognize who he'd been - like an old statue that hadn't been cleaned since the beginning of time.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me," Bacchus said, looking up at her. "Congrats, Rory. You just tagged your second ancient in six months - and I'm pretty sure you're still drunk."

She nodded to him, and then sat forward. For a second, she said nothing, and then took in a deep, wheezing breath (since he'd done some damage to her vocal chords just then) and rocked down onto her knees, digging her fists into her bedspread. She couldn't tell if she was going to throw up or cry, and finally settled on wailing into the fabric, using it to muffle the sudden rush of emotion she felt. Her voice came out foreign to her, but she screamed even harder, pushing through the pain. She had come close to dying before, but that had been too real somehow. He'd been in her home. In her room.

Bacchus picked his way over the body and put a hand on her back, shushing her. "You're okay," he assured her, though he himself wasn't sure if that were entirely true. "You're okay," he said again. With his hand still on her, he grabbed the cord where her phone was plugged into the charger, pulling it to himself until he could reach the physical phone itself. He didn't have her password, so he just switched the lock screen to the ICE contact list, and called the first number he saw. Stav.

"You need to get to Aurora's apartment," he said. And then he hung up, and brushed the phone away. "Fuck," he said aloud, to nobody in particular. "Fuck."

Aurora had been stuck with Bacchus for two months now. She'd missed parties and other work events that, despite being on leave, she should have attended, for fear of someone seeing him. He had said that he couldn't control when he came and went sometimes, but they'd never really talked about it beyond that. She just didn't trust it, and didn't trust him, mostly, despite the fact that he seemed intensely different from what she had first seen. First impressions, though, were a bitch.

She'd decided to drive up into upstate for a long weekend, or maybe longer, just to clear her head and not be around anyone. Bacchus tagged along, because of course he did. He sat in the passenger seat of her Jeep quietly, eyes scanning the trees as they drove up the winding road to where the hotel was. It was all wooden; he thought it looked like someone had built a small tourist town out of logs, and that's more or less what it was. Everything was green and brown and natural. When they finally parked, the first thing he smelled when he got out was heavy pine, and he inwardly gagged. Couldn't touch anything, but could smell? Truly, it was bogus.

"I gotta go get checked in," she told him, looking to make sure nobody was watching her talk to the invisible man. "I'd ask you to take the bags, but.."

"Ha-ha," he snapped. "Don't worry Rory, I'll guard them. If someone comes by to steal them, maybe I can poltergeist their ass," he offered.

She snorted, knowing that he hadn't been able to move a single object thus far, and disappeared into the clerk's office. He sighed, leaning against the jeep - for a moment he almost fell through it, and was sure that he looked like a frightened cat. Sometimes, it was okay if nobody saw him, he supposed. He got comfortable, wondering exactly how the fuck long did it take to get your reservation, when Aurora came outside, chatting with someone.

"Oh, that would be great," he could hear her saying. "I gotta get unpacked, but maybe I'll see you around?"

"Wouldn't miss it," the man responded.

Bacchus felt his heart that didn't beat freeze in his chest even harder, if that were possible. He stayed perfectly still, shielded by the back half of the vehicle and looking though the windows to make sure that the man had left, and then ran around to the back of the jeep. "Aurora, you need to leave, now," he said. He actually grabbed her by the arm, which startled her. She looked at his hand, and then at him, but he didn't let go, trying to show how serious he was.

"I know that man, and he's not a man, he's another ancient," he warned her.

"What?" she said, genuine confusion on her face. He released her arm so that she could make all the gestures he knew she'd want to make when she spoke, and she did exactly that, holding her hands up. "I got nothing off of him. Not even a stray vibe."

"You won't," he said, his voice serious. "He was my second fledgling. And he is powerful, Aurora, especially with me out of the game. Look, I promise, anywhere else, I'll leave you alone, you won't even see me the entire weekend, but you need to go back in there, make them purge your personal information, and then get in the car and leave."

"Dude, you're freaking me out," she told him.

He took her by the arm again, pulling her closely to him so that he could look down into her face. "If you stay here, he will kill you. Do you understand me?"

She looked like she wanted to fight him on it, but her face went from defiant to soft after a few seconds. "Okay," she agreed. "Okay, I'll get my shit and we can go." She walked away from him wordlessly, internally feeling actual nervousness, mostly because he was very rarely so serious with her. Sure, most of the time there was truth to what he said, but he seldom made actual demands, and so this kind of flagged her as problematic, so she was inclined to listen to him.

"Thank fucking god," he breathed, letting her go so that she could go back inside. He scrubbed his face with his hands, then paced around the jeep anxiously.  He drummed his fingers against the hood, and as soon as he saw her come out, he jumped into the vehicle. The sooner they vacated, the better. "He's every bit as obsessive as I was, maybe even worse," Bacchus said, his brown eyes scanning the road as they pulled out - but now he wasn't just looking idly into the wilderness, he was scanning for danger.

"Can you give me a little background on this guy?" she asked, navigating the jeep back onto the main thoroughfare that would lead them back to the interstate.

He sighed. Inwardly, he wanted to just pop back into the darkness, so that he wouldn't have to explain their complicated relationship. Orpheus was probably his greatest shame. As a vampire, he'd never cared about how the situation had gone, and in fact had been proud that the man had followed him, dedicating thousands of years to being one step behind him, shadowing his sire, waiting for the day where he would finally misstep. When Aurora had killed him in Midnight, Orpheus had simply gotten his things and left, and Bacchus had no idea where he'd gone next. But his heart was so full of hate that he sincerely doubted he'd found anything better to fill that thousand year old hole with. He looked at Aurora, realizing why he resonated with her so much - she was doing the same fucking thing that Orpheus had done, only to far less a degree.

"He is my one regret, in two-thousand seven-hundred some odd years," he said honestly. He looked out the window, frowning. "We were friends, once. As close as brothers, when we'd been human. Until, of course, we both met the same girl."

"Oofta," Aurora muttered, keenly interested in this drama now. "So, did you get the girl, and he hated you forever for it?"

"No," he said. "He won her. He married her, in fact. I was there for the ceremony."

Aurora frowned. "Okay... so like, you were just bitter about it or....?"

"You realize, Aurora, that I have never spoken this story aloud? The only person who even knows that Orpheus and I used to be friends is that scholarly friend of yours," he admitted.

"The one you tried to bite," she reminded him.

"Yes," he snapped. "She piqued my hunger, and as no one could resist me, I could not resist it, and so it goes," he said, his voice full of irritation.

"Alright, I got it," she said, sounding properly scolded. "So what happened?"

He was silent for a while, nothing between them but the sound of the road. "After I was turned into a vampire, I went back to the village where we had all lived. I killed him, and I blood-bonded her." He said it like he said that he'd gone to the gas station to get some bread; he'd said it like it was a normal thing to say, like it held no meaning to him at all. But because his voice was curiously devoid of any emotion, so much like Aurora had trained hers to be, she realized that he'd only disassociated from it so he wouldn't have to feel all the things it made him feel. She suddenly realized why Evan had always had a problem with her doing it; it was actually kind of fucking unsettling to witness.

"And you kept her until Fawn killed her, " Aurora said, slowly. "You kept her with you, right in front of him, the whole time."

"Always within his reach, but never close enough to reach," he said. "Why do you think he's called Orpheus, Aurora? You've read the myth. And you know what they say, all myths are steeped in truths," he laughed bitterly. "It's my fault his power is what it is, too. It was a direct result of what I did. That rage, so much rage," he said, shaking his head.

"Yeah, I'm a little fuzzy on the details of his ability. They just said that only female hunters could be tasked for it," she told him, her brow arching.

"It's extreme rage," he explained. "It bleeds off of him, like poison. He loved Deyinara so much and when he saw her taken from him and fully devoted to me, his love turned into hate, and it was all directed at her. And me, but over the years, it became misplaced. And so, like the poison tree, his power grew." He sighed a little. "It's incredibly unique, and incredibly dangerous. Do some light reading on him with Therrayans if you want your guilds history on him," he advised. "I'm told he caused one of the hunters' husbands to try and kill her. You see, his power only impacts men. He turns them against women. They exact that influence exactly as you'd expect," he said, and he didn't feel the need to elaborate. Aurora could use her imagination.

She was quiet for a while, taking all of that in. "Do you think he'd already influenced the people where we just were?" she asked finally.

"I don't know," he said honestly. "I just know that he'll be a lot more bold with me out of the way. He has only hate left in him. It's all he's known for thousands of years. Now that the object of his hatred is gone, he won't know what to direct it at. He may have acted like he didn't know you, but Aurora, I promise, every vampire on this fucking planet knows who you are. I'm sure you weren't thinking of the real-world repercussions killing me would have, but you are famous, girl."

"Fuck," she whispered. He could see her grip was tight on the steering wheel, causing her knuckles to turn white. He didn't know why, but he reached over, placing his hand on top of hers, in an effort to calm her.

"It'll work itself out, I'm sure," he offered.

She flung his hand off of her own, exactly as he'd expected. "HOW?" she demanded. "You just gonna come back to life and fix it for me? Gonna turn back into the fanged hungry hungry hippo and go puppeteer your rogue fledgling?"

He looked down for a moment. "I deserved that," he said.

"Yes, Bacchus, you did. And SO much more! Fuck, do you ruin the life of everyone close to you?"

"I did, yes," he said glibly. "So if I were you, I wouldn't consider yourself close to me."

"I DON'T!" she yelled. "But I AM stuck with you, and that's like the same fucking thing." She punched her steering wheel a few times, then yelled angrily. "God DAMNIT Bacchus."

Bacchus sat on the couch in Aurora's apartment. He was facing the TV, but he wasn't watching it. He couldn't stomach any more of it. He glanced over at his blonde companion, who was leaned on the arm of the couch, elbow crooked and fist on her head. She was staring at the TV too, but her eyes were glazed and he could tell that she, too, was miles away. He resisted the urge to reach out and touch her. Not for any particular reason, just to feel something. Oh, he could feel the couch beneath him, but if he thought about it too hard, he'd fall right through it. He hadn't really figured out the rules and regulations of the limbo state he existed in, but from things he'd learned, Aurora could see and hear him; they could have physical contact, though it was usually violent spats when it did occur; and he could do basic actions such as sit on the couch, sit in her car, sit at her kitchen table, and (unbeknownst to her) lay down on her bed. He thought maybe he could pick things up or move them, but he hadn't been able to do it yet, and he suspected he'd need particular conviction, something that he lacked at current.

He also found that he could still exhibit some control over Aurora through command, and though he'd only done it once, it was proof that his power still lingered with him. He found he didn't desire to use it, though. He didn't desire much anymore, and he wasn't sure if he should attribute it to the in-between state he was in or if it was due to the fact that since he was no longer corporeal, the hunger inside of him no longer had any hold. He guessed that the longer that was, the less likely he'd be able to wield control over her - but since it was rare the opportunity presented itself, and he hadn't expected to take the ability with him when he died, he didn't see any reason to stress over it. Not when there was so much for him to stress about elsewhere.

Speaking of the hunger - that hunger that drove many of his line to madness, in fact, when they seemed to age out of where they still retained a little humanity - it was a relief that it was gone. In his mortal life, he'd been a creative type; sensitive, passionate, and, yes, a very controlling person. But his vampirism had perverted that to a dumpster fire that fueled itself through every interaction he had: he would control and create and he would grow hungrier and he would feed the hunger by controlling and creating. He'd created an entire line of vampires, and though as the blood traveled further from him, the devotion grew weaker, those he kept in close proximity couldn't resist him. Once upon a time, Aurora would not have been able to resist him.

And now?

He reached out to touch her, slowly, finger coming to a point as he aimed to poke her in the arm, and as quick as lightning he got a hard smack on his wrist, diverting his hand's path to the couch where his finger bounced off the cushion.

"Stop," came her warning growl.

He knew by her tone she would only warn him once. In truth, he could snap her neck in an instant, and they both knew it. But because he had bitten her, and had managed to tether enough of himself to her, it would not be helpful to hurt her. Had he known that he'd even end up in this stupid stuck state, he may have not even done it at all, just so that he could fucking die already.

A knock on her door surprised the shit out of both of them, and immediately she looked at him. "Who the fuck is that?" she asked.

"What? How the fuck am I supposed to know? Why do you look over at me like I invited someone here? I can't even pick up the phone," he snapped, and demonstrated by swiping his hand angrily through the phone that sat between them on the couch.

"Ugh," she muttered. "Right, whatever." She always looked at him when something happened, because most of the time, she wanted it to be his fault. He was noticing that she blamed other people a LOT. He'd love to point out this gaping flaw in her personality, but he didn't really have room to speak, given what had driven her to kill him in the first place.

"Just get rid of them," he said. "They're about to run a throwback Laguna Beach marathon, and I need you to explain it to me."

Aurora looked into the peephole, and then stood up straight. "Shut up," she hissed to him. "It's Evan." She waited a second, and then opened the door. It wasn't wide enough that he could see into the living room; it wasn't directly in the line of site anyways, but still.

"Why should I shut up?" Bacchus snapped. "It's not like dude can hear me anyways. Just get rid of him," he repeated.

"Hey, I tried calling," Evan said, greeting Aurora. He paused for a second, and then raised his head a little. "Dude can definitely hear you, by the way." He looked back at her, seeming a little taken aback, but politely deciding not to address anything he thought. "We should set up a good time to talk," he said.

Aurora very carefully did not react to Evan talking to Bacchus, instead just sighing. "Sorry, I'm having a Laguna Beach marathon," she said. In the background Bacchus could be heard saying 'YEEES' at the marathon concession. "It's ah, throwback night tonight. I didn't know you'd be coming by." She stepped outside into the cold, closing the door behind her and permanently severing the possibility that those two could see eachother up close.

"I always figured you as more of a Hills person," Evan joked.

"I'm a neither person, honestly," she said, rolling her eyes. "It's an  - old friend. He's kind of -"

"Obnoxious?" Evan offered helpfully.

"That is a word, yes," she nodded, a hint of a smile on her face. "Listen, maybe next week or something. I can call you. I'm - I don't really want to be around anyone right now," she said. It was entirely because of Bacchus, because she didn't need his sidebar commentary as a third invisible wheel in her discussions. Oh, he'd talk shit when she was on the phone, but that was easy to filter out.

"Well, around almost anyone," Evan said. "Really, it's fine. Next week." He paused. "It's good to see you."

"You too," she said. She felt like she should give him a goodbye hug or something, but they just stood there, and then she nodded. "I'm gonna go in. It's cold. I'll see you." And she opened the door behind her, backing through it.

Bacchus was right on the other side of it, having gotten up to wait for her, and scared the shit out of her when she backed into him. He didn't move, though, forcing her to side-step him. Maybe that voracious hunger wasn't back, but it didn't mean that he didn't find himself craving things like a simple touch. If he got his fix from forcing her to bump into him, so be it. He wasn't too proud.

"What the fuck," she spat, maneuvering around him. "Why are you always up in my shit?!"

"Be-cause I'm a fucking ghost or whatever and I yearn for the warmth of human contact?" he asked sarcastically, his expression mirroring it. He followed her back in the living room. "So, your boytoy out there could hear me," he said, after she sat back down but had addressed nothing.

"Yeah," she said. "I was there."

"Do you think there's a reason why, maybe?" he pushed.

Aurora sighed. "Because he's a fucking magical creature? I don't know, dude. Can we just watch this stupid show?"

And now, of course, she was avoiding it. Man, she had problems stacked on top of problems. "Aurora, he's a Phoenix. Those things bring life. Do you think you could help a guy out, here?" he asked, standing deliberately in her line of sight.

She made a face and sat up, leaning forward. "Listen. The last time I got some of his magic, I ended up with a ghost vampire stuck to me like a fucking tick. What in the actual fuck makes you think I'd - a - ask for his help and - b - he'd give it?"

Bacchus gave his characteristic lazy shrug. "Men do stupid things for women all the time. It's kind of the story of my life," he added.

"Maybe," she acknowledged. "But I guarantee whatever he'd do would just put you into the void of space forever, or erase you from reality entirely. He's not a fan."

"Oh, and you are?"

"No, but I promise, he's less of one, if that's fucking possible. Listen, we will figure it out, but not through him. Now do you want to watch this stupid show or not?" she asked, holding the remote up pointedly and shaking it. She took his answer as affirmative as he sat back down on the couch, and she changed the channel and tossed the remote onto the coffee table with a loud clatter.

He wasn't watching the show, though. He was thinking. Making a checklist in his head, now that he was aware other people might be able to hear or see him. Who else could have the ability to do that? He bet that voodoo priest would. But there were others, and he'd have to either figure out ways around them or avoid them. None of them were people Aurora should go to talk to, anyways. Well, there might be a few people that probably weren't super power-hungry magical nightmares, but he doubted they'd ever come up. Evan, and Aristide, for now, were on that list.

He stole a glance at Aurora, who, for having talked so much shit about the show, seemed completely invested. It figures, he thought to himself as he settled in. Maybe she had the right idea. Blondes and beaches and bullshit first-world problems seemed like the perfect escape right now.

Aurora was drunk. She hadn't been this drunk in a while, but Bacchus knew something was up when she came home from the store with several bags of goodies from the local liquor store. "Christ," he muttered, sitting on the couch in the living room and trying to ignore her as she sat alone in the kitchen, her back to him, and killed a bottle. She'd offered to pour him a drink, but then laughed when she realized he couldn't, and walked away.

She sat in her chair, quietly mulling over her current glass, holding it with her wrist twisted so that she could still have her chin on her hand, elbow rested against the table. She was deep in thought, despite her her head positively swimming. There were so many things she needed to deal with, and she had no concept of what order to go about it. Her solution, of course, was to get drunk about it, and hope that she'd have some magnificent moment of clarity. It was how she'd come up with the Midnight plan - several bottles of wine and another brilliant mind to help lead the way. But now, sitting alone, her problems just seemed endless. She groaned and set the glass down, stretching and leaning back in the chair a little. Abruptly, her eyes popped open and she righted herself, an expression of shock on her face.

"I've got the spins," she said aloud. She heaved a loud sigh, and then picked up her glass. "Fuck it," she muttered.

After a moment, she turned, scooting her chair loudly so that she could see Bacchus without craning her neck like a fucking owl. "Hey," she called. "What are you doing over there by yourself?"

Bacchus stared at the TV a moment longer, then looked pointedly at her. "Avoiding the trainwreck that is you, right now, sister. Seriously, you've got issues, and they're just radiating off of you. I'm good over here on the limbo couch. Besides, I want to see who the Masked Singer is."

Aurora got up, glass in one hand and bottle in the other, and approached the couch. "It's John Legend, dude. It's always Legend." And she sat down next to him, glass in hand. She emptied it, then shook the ice around, and set it down on the floor for a second next to the bottle. She then turned to him and just stared at him. It was critical at first, but then the expression faded away off her face, and she sort of looked blank.

"What?" Bacchus said. "What? What is your problem, you little weirdo? Are you always like this when you've had more than your limit?" He didn't scoot away from her; there wasn't really a point.

She tilted her head a little. "What's it like?" she asked.

"What is what like?" He glanced back to the TV, but Aurora took the remote and turned it off. He huffed.

"Dying. What's it like? Where do you go when I don't see you?"

"I don't know. I don't think I'm fully dead. I think dying is just nothing, just ceasing to exist. But this, this is some hellish limbo," he confessed. He looked at her, his thick brows furrowed. "And I don't know if I'm stuck here forever or if there's a way to bring me back or push me over to the nothing, but I know that eventually, it will get very, very old seeing you."

She snorted. "I'm a vision," she said, tossing her hair.

"Yeah, a vision of a car crash in slow motion. Listen, I know you killed me, but honey, you need to slow your roll. I suspect if you die, I will also cease to exist, and if we're in our sharing circle right now, I'd rather find a way to be brought back," he told her.

She shook her head, this a totally new thought to her. "Wait, you think if I die, you'll just - " and she made a gesture with her hands that gave the impression he'd just pop out of existence.

He shrugged. "I don't know. But I don't think I'd like to find out. And that Phoenix of yours doesn't seem too keen on the idea of you dying, even if he's raging fucking mad at you, still. Have I told you what a fucking power move that was, by the way? I have to admit, better killed by a worthy adversary than by like, a random hunter while I'm minding my own business."

She smiled, and reached down for her glass. She knocked it over instead, the ice splaying out across the floor. "Whoops," she muttered. She picked up the bottle instead. "Guess I don't really need a glass after all."

"Uh, maybe you should slow down," Bacchus said, holding a hand up. He couldn't really touch the bottle, or take it from her, but still. "You're going to end up dying of alcohol poisoning."

She gave him a Look, and then lifted the bottle, taking a healthy sip. "Don't tell me what to do. You have no power over me."

He gave her a dark look in return, something far more familiar of him than what she'd seen recently. "Put the fucking bottle down," he commanded.

She found that she was compelled to put the bottle down, and then looked at her hand, and then him, mouth agape. "No," she growled. "No, you don't get to do that." She wretched, the feeling of violation running through her body like a dirt that she couldn't wash away. She cringed, crossing her arms tightly and looking down at the couch. "Don't ever fucking do that again," she said slowly.

"I'll be honest and say that I didn't even know I could do that," he admitted. "I don't know if I could even replicate it." His voice was stunned, and a little impressed with himself. "Fuck, the possibilities could be endless," he muttered.

"DON'T," Aurora yelled. She was drunk, which she was aware of, but she felt all of those problems just rushing to the surface, and Evan's words about 'thought you were past wanting to die' kept bouncing around in her head like a fucking 22 caliber bullet. "If you're gonna try and use me like some creepy wind up doll, then just fucking kill me," she snapped.

"What?" Bacchus said. Where the fuck did that come from. "We just discussed you not dying," he reminded her.

"No, no," she said, and she straightend out, then scooted towards him. "Bite me again. Undo it."

Bacchus looked incredibly confused, but he didn't scoot away from her, yet. "It doesn't work like that," he informed her, holding his hands up. "You need to go walk this off or something. You are beyond trashed now."

She fixed her stare on him, eyeing him critiacally again. "But if you could, would you?"

"Would I what? Undo it? I'd undo my entire demise, you're goddamn right," he spat. "We're not twinsies just because we both got the last blow in a fight to the death, you know."

"No," she said, though she did snort at his exposition. She would never consider them that close. "Would you bite me agian?"

Bacchus stood up. "Alright, well, that's my cue," he said loudly. He tried to pick up the vodka bottle, swearing when his hand went through it. Of fucking course it did, he thought to himself. At any rate, he was absolutely not about to get into this violent and somehow strangely sexual territory with the girl who had murdered him as revenge for him "ruining her life" or whatever. Whatever was happening, it was all because this stupid human had drank her goddamn weight in alcohol and was saying whatever inflammatory thing she could to try and - get a reaction out of him? He honestly didn't know. Truth be told, him not being able to do anything about it probably motivated the shit out of her. Bully for him.

"You probably couldn't manage anyways," she said to herself. "We just keep getting away from you. Somehow, we always just slip away," she said. She was referencing Fawn, Jillian, and now herself. She shook her head, closing her eyes for a moment. They popped open when she felt something on her, and realized that she was looking right into Bacchus' dark brown eyes - and they were angry.

"Gentle reminder, Rory, that you didn't get away from anything. You don't have me, I have you, don't confuse what's happening here." He had pinned her to the couch, though he wasn't hurting her at all - if someone were to walk in, they'd have thought something very different was happening. He had his hand at her throat, gently, just as he'd said, and his fingers lightly brushed over the bite that was still healing. She was frozen under him, and he could feel that her breath had caught in her throat.

He was off of her, just as quickly as it happened, and she un-froze, leaping off of the couch - jumping over the back of it, in fact, and hitting the floor like she were ducking from a grenade blast. She popped up, suddenly very fucking sober, and backed against the wall, holding an angry finger up to point at him. She couldn't even speak, she was so fried.

To be fair, Bacchus also looked pretty surprised. "I didn't know I could do that, either" he said, his voice betraying his amazement. He looked down at his hands, then back up to her. "Holy shit, I can touch you."

"Stay the FUCK away from me," she screamed, suddenly able to move again. She raced around behind the couches, taking the long way around the living room and escaping into the bathroom.

"Really wish I FUCKING COULD!" he yelled back as she slammed the door.

Aurora sat outside Stav's office, slumped back in her chair with her right leg bouncing. She had her arms crossed, and her eyes stared straight ahead. I feel like I'm back in high school, she thought to herself. She was trying to temper down how she felt about all this, knowing that Stavros would sense it and it could sway his judgment. He'd been in there a while. Connor was in there, too. So was Evan. So was Irulan. She could hear their voices inside, but couldn't listen in unless she strained, or got up, and she was willing to do neither.

Across from her, another blonde girl sat, and though she wasn't outwardly projecting her nerves through fidgeting, it was clear the way that she "read" a book by just flipping pages to look like she was being productive that she wasn't able to concentrate any better.

"What are you in trouble for?" Aurora asked.  She didn't immediately recognize her, and Bacchus, seated in the chair next to her, leaned in to whisper.

"That girl looks like she's about to quit," he said, staring at Lily as he spoke. He looked back to Aurora, whose eyes were wide. "Oh, sorry - did I not explain this super clearly last night? Yeah, I bit you right before you crushed my heart - which, by the way, seems like your specialty," he added, "and uh, yeah. You're stuck with me now."

She turned her head slowly to stare at him, lips pursed - obviously, she wasn't going to answer him. She was still trying to figure out if he was a hallucination or not.

"Oh, don't worry, I can talk all day," he said, stretching in the chair. "I like that you're already questioning your sanity, though. I'm definitely here, it's just that only you can see me, my little devotee," he said with a smile. "That's the price you pay for killing me right after I sank my teeth into you. By the way," he said, tilting his head to look at the bandage covering her neck, "that looks rough. Have you been cleaning it properly? Maybe you should get Victor to look at it."

She looked away from him and back to the girl. She recognized her as Lilyana, but she'd been a transfer from Onyx. Probably where she was headed, if they didn't sequester her to Frost - or cut her altogether. She shifted in her chair, glancing back towards the door again. What was taking so long? Just fucking figure it out.

"I set up an appointment to talk to them, that's all," Lilyana said, answering Aurora's question. "You?"

Aurora let out a noise that sounded like a laugh, but not quite. "I took a side job and did a lot of damage," she said, and it was honestly the truth.

"Don't forget to tell her you killed an ancient. That seems to be your claim to fame," Bacchus reminded her.

"Would you shut up?" Aurora snapped.

"What?" Lily said, stunned.

"Sorry, my fucking phone keeps going off. Apparently when you're in the principal's office, all your friends want to know the deets," she said, holding her phone up.

"Nice save," Bacchus said. "Let's see how many more times you can do that before you start looking crazy." He got up, and walked over to where Lily was, taking a seat next to her. He grinned as Aurora stared at him. He could see that she didn't know whether to be angry or horrified. "Why do you think she's going to talk to them?" he asked, looking at her. "I still think she's quitting. I bet she's pregnant or something. She looks like the type that would get knocked up and quit. Pretty hunters never last long." He paused, then looked back at Aurora. "Except for you, of course. But I don't know if I'd call this 'lasting'."

Aurora tried to ignore him, but she had to admit, the girl did look nervous. "If you made an appointment, why do you look like you want to dig a hole and hide in it?" she pressed. Hey, she had nothing to lose, now. The longer this took, the more likely it was that she was getting the axe.

Lilyana set her book down. She didn't speak for a minute, staring at the ground, and then looked back up at Aurora. "Did you ever want something else out of life? I just don't know if this is for me anymore. My life is changing, and hunting is a large part of it. Too large. It occupies space that I need for other things. So," she said, taking a shaky breath, "I'm probably putting in for my terminal leave."

Bacchus laughed. "I knew it!" he shouted. "This bitch is pregnant!"

As much as he was pissing her off, Aurora found herself thinking he might be right. "Can't relate," was all she said. Good. Quit. Go 'occupy space' as a housewife or whatever. Maybe they won't fire me if they're short people, she thought selfishly.

The door to the office opened and Aurora sat up, turning to see who was coming out. When she saw it was Evan, she felt anger. She stood up, and Bacchus stood, too, coming to stand just at her side. "Hey!" she snapped, yelling at his back. It figures he'd try to bail without even so much as looking at her. "What the fuck were you in there telling them?" she demanded.

"The truth, Aurora," he snapped. He didn't stop moving, either - it was abundantly clear that he was still in his feelings about what had happened.

"That's your man?" Bacchus asked. "I thought he'd be taller."

"Not everyone can be as tall as you," she snapped.

"Aurora," Stavros said. He didn't yell it, he just said it, and that was enough to stop her from following Evan. ThE TrUtH. What version of the truth, she wondered. She spun on her heel and went into the office, not even bothering to shut the door behind her. They'd either get it or they wouldn't; she didn't particularly care who heard what she'd done. She didn't feel it was anything to catch a reprimand for, still. Bacchus followed her in, because of course he did.

"Jesus Christ, what is this, a gangbang?" he asked, looking around the room. "Three against one? Oh, you're definitely getting fired, Rory. They brought the shrink," he said, gesturing to Irulan.

She ignored Bacchus, sitting down in the chair as she was directed. He continued to walk around the room giving commentary, but she tuned him out as she would a gnat for the moment - despite some of the things he'd said being pretty on point.

"So, Aurora, you know why you're here, right?" Connor asked.

"Because I took a side job, infiltrated Midnight, and killed an Ancient," she replied bluntly.

"That is why you're here, partially, but it's more because of the things you did to achieve it," Connor said, sitting forward. "Aurora, it's a great accomplishment, but it could have come at the expense of your life - and you used your partner."

She looked at Stav, brows arched. Was he actually on board with this "almost died" bullshit? She looked back at Connor. "Ah, look - I get that Evan's mad about whatever he thinks I did or didn't do on his end, but you're seriously sitting here telling me that I'm on the chopping block because I risked my life for a job? Connor, when's the last time you were out on a hunt? We risk our lives every time we go. What fucking reality are you guys in?"

"Get him," Bacchus hissed, suddenly leaning over her shoulder.

Connor opened his mouth, probably to put Aurora in check, but Irulan held her hand up. "Alright," she said, cutting him off before he started in. "Alright, listen. Nobody in this room is minimizing your accomplishment. You are the first hunter to successfully target, track, and kill one of the Ancients. But because you went through backchannels to accomplish it, it displays a level of recklessness that I know you've been dinged for in the past." She stopped for a moment, trying to gather her thoughts, and then she came from behind Connor's desk and sat on the front of it, off to the side so she wasn't blocking him.

"Aurora, I promise, I understand the need for closure. I was tortured, and lost most of my family the same night that your friend was killed," she told her gently. "I get it." There was something dark in her eyes, something darker than they were, when she spoke about what had happened. It actually gave Connor and Stavros a little shock, because she never discussed it.

"But," Aurora prompted her. She was listening, though.

"But," Irulan agreed. "And honestly, suspend the idea that we're upset about your risking your own life, because I'm not in accord there. What you did do, though, is risk an incredibly rare and valuable asset - who, yes, also happens to be your partner. Relationship aside, Aurora - whatever you did or didn't do to him physically or emotionally, you did reveal his presence, and nature, to two Ancients in Midnight. And that puts him at a grave risk. He may have to relocate entire, or go into hiding again."

Aurora was quiet. She really didn't have any room to stand, and she knew it. "Iloquil already knew what he was," she said, though it wasn't in defense of her actions. More like, she needed to clarify something. "She asked me if I wanted to know how she got her fire." She stopped, realizing that all of them, including Bacchus were waiting for her to continue. "She just - trust me, she already knew." She sighed. No sense in divulging those details, since they weren't pertinent. And since she didn't know just what she was allowed to even repeat from their conversation. Didn't need to have more ancients trying to splatter her.

"It doesn't matter if she already knew," Irulan said. "You were taken, so that's every creature that saw you on the way in, and then every creature who saw you before you got directly to the top. It's too many eyes, and we can't verify who actually knew what it was, and who thought you were just some weird brand of shapeshifter. You're not in trouble because of your accolades. You're in trouble because you lost us an asset."

Irulan had a feeling that Connor's attempt to appeal to her emotional side wasn't going to work right now, and she was right. Speaking from her own experience, Irulan had become very pragmatic after everything that had happened. Attempting to make her feel bad for things just didn't impact her, and actually only seemed to make her mad. Telling her that she was messing with the logical nature of things, though, that made sense to her, it was something she could see and understand. She was so emotionally stunted after repeated traumas that it took a long time to get back to normal. And she could see that Aurora had regressed a little from the experience, despite defeating the so called monster under her bed. Sometimes, even if you killed them, they'd still remain in your head. It was the worst part about revenge.

"Shit," Aurora hissed. She looked at Connor. "So, I'm done then?"

Connor sighed. "No," he said. "Trust me, I wasn't on board with that, either. I'm incredibly disappointed in you, Aurora. You are better than this. I know you are," he said, and he didn't care if she wasn't receptive to it at the moment, because he needed to say it. Keeping faith in his hunters was part of the gig of leadership, and eventually, she would come back to it, and it was important that she knew it. "You have every ability to excel in this profession. But right now, you need some time off. You're on admin leave for the next two months."

"Are you serious?" she asked, her eyes as wide as saucers.

"As a fucking heart attack," Stavros said. "And in that time, you will see Irulan on a weekly basis. You need to get your head put back together, girl," he warned her. "I trained you, and no student of mine is going to do the things that you have done. Evan is an old, trusted friend, and when you cut into him, you cut into me."

"So this is personal?" she asked, unable to stop herself. It didn't help that Bacchus was egging her on from the sidelines - when he wasn't touching shit in Connor's office, that is.

"It is absolutely personal, Aurora," Stavros said. "Like Irulan said - you lost us a valuable asset, and you wounded a personal acquaintance in the process. If you'd have just asked me for help, I could have helped you. You could have skipped the whole process."

She stood up. "I doubt that if I'd have told you I wanted to get taken into Midnight, you seriously would have helped me," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Yes, Aurora, I would have," Stav snapped back. "That you are my student and demonstrate so little knowledge of my abilities as a hunter and a trainer shows how far you've degraded yourself. I sincerely hope the time off and the time with Irulan will be well-spent in returning you back to fully operational." He looked at her, and it wasn't a nice look. "Dismissed."

Aurora left, hands up as she did so. She paused at the door, turning to look into the office. "Hey Batten, I think your next hunter is pregnant. Why don't you try the appeal to good nature with her, instead? Might be more effective." She saw that he spit out the water he'd just taken a sip of, and grinned to them all before turning and walking off, leaving Lily staring at her in abject horror as she did so.

As she walked down the hallway, Bacchus hurried to catch up to her. "God damn!" he hooted. "Rory, I didn't know you had it in you! Fuck, I'm a little turned on right now by how that went. Never back down from a fight, do you? Oh man, I can't wait to spend the rest of my limbo life with you."

"Quit calling me Rory, you fucking reptile. It's Aurora," she growled. "And as soon as I figure out a way to banish you back to whatever shadow realm you came from, I'll be a much more perky girl."

"Oh, no," he sang, wrapping an arm around her aggressively. "We're best friends forever."

We'll fuckin' see about that, she thought to herself, cringing under his grasp as they walked towards the parking garage.

Being Bambi sucked sometimes. Her ability came and went, and there was no way to turn it off completely. Sometimes, she could feel a vision coming on, and she could break away from the situation before it hit her, but she didn't like to do that, because the whole point of having visions was to have them, right? At any rate, it happened at bad times on rare occasion, but really it had never done anything so severe as what occurred to her that night.

The problem with it being connected to physical touch, of course, was that it made touch complicated. And Bambi didn't need anything more complicated than it already was. Fortunately, she'd been with Leon for long enough that her ability had sort of learned to "mute" him, as it were. She touched him almost every day; there was no way for her to get visions that much, not unless she were to just get a live feed of him eating lunch and arguing with Judge Judy during his mid-afternoon break from the office. As laughable as that would be, the visions only served to tell her things, or more importantly to warn her, so that she could in turn warn the subject - or not, as had been a few cases before she'd met him.

Since she hadn't had any visions in a while, she felt pretty comfortable, and they fell into a routine. Bambi sometimes slept in the guest room when she felt jittery, something she felt incredibly bad about, regardless of how much she didn't express that. She hated to leave him alone at night. It was so stupid, that she felt protective of him, but the man needed it. It seemed like he'd spent a large chunk of his life protecting others, which had landed him in this massive, magical mess, and now it was up to Bambi to protect him.

Except Bambi was just one witch, with a stupid precognitive ability based on intimate contact, and she couldn't even control her pet goat. Speaking of the goat, Black Phillip - so affectionately named after the goat in VVITCH - was awake, and standing at the edge of the guest bed, staring at her. She stared back at him in the darkness, and the two of them stayed like that for a while. Edward always called it "mind melding", but really, Bambi just thought it was a staring contest with the goat - and sometimes, when she did, she would space out a little, and she would come out of it with a sense of something she needed to do. Right now, she felt very strongly like she needed to go back into the master bedroom.

"Really?" she whispered to the goat. "But you hate Leon," she said.

The goat just bit into a piece of the blanket and began trying to chew on it, which earned him a swat from Bambi on her way out.

"No," she hissed. "Go back downstairs if you can't behave," she commanded. When he didn't move, she narrowed her eyes. "Go, or I'll take you down myself and put the baby gate up."

At that, the goat turned and left, and if an animal could walk with righteous indignation, it would have been that fucking goat, right then. Bambi rolled her eyes, glad that nobody had been there to witness it. What a unique, and strange, familiar her father had given her. Irulan hadn't gotten one yet, but Bambi had helpfully suggested a white goose, and Mikhail had been tickled at the idea. She shook her head as she walked down the hall, pushing the door open into the shared bedroom Bambi and Leon had.

Leon was out of the blankets, sprawled across her side of the bed, which made her smile - but he was twitching in his sleep, which immediately wiped the smile from her face.

"Stop," she heard him say. He rolled over quickly, drawing an arm up. "Stop!" he said again.

"Oh, shit," Bambi muttered. Night terrors. She rolled her eyes, feeling guilt welling up in her chest. He so rarely had them when she was around, and since he hadn't mentioned them in so long, Bambi had stupidly assumed they'd stopped. She crossed the room, crawling into bed with him, and very, very carefully, placed her hand on his shoulder, stroking it lightly.

"Leon," she whispered. "Wake up, you're dreaming." She put just a little honey on her voice, giving it that magical push to try and get to him through whatever was clouding his brain. Bambi's magic didn't often work on Leon directly due to his encapsulated power, but she'd found that her candied up voice sometimes proved influential. She could try, it wouldn't hurt, right?

He stirred in his sleep, and she said his name again, this time a little more loudly. She still didn't want to shake him - that's how she fucking got hit last time. He'd never stop apologizing for it, and she wasn't mad about it, but boy when Edward had showed up to work that morning and saw her, he wanted answers immediately.

"Wake. Up." There was no more sugar in her voice; now she was speaking at normal tone, firmly. "You are dreaming. Wake up."

Finally, it worked, and she jumped back as he swung, just like she fucking knew he would. He sat bolt upright in the process, and then immediately put his hands to his head. "Fuck," he breathed. "Fucking fuck." It took him a minute to realize Bambi was there, and then he reached out, grabbing her and pulling her closer. "I'm sorry," he said, resting his head on her shoulder. "Didn't hit you, did I?"

"That's amateur shit," she told him with a smile. "I learned to move." She kissed him lightly, realizing that he had been sweating, and raised a hand to touch his hair. "Jesus, what were you dreaming about?" she asked, wiping it on his arm.

He laughed, then pulled away, turning and standing up so that he could go to the bathroom and splash some water on his face. "It was - I don't know," he said finally, drying his hands on the towel. He felt a little better, but if we're keeping track, he still felt overall like hammered shit. He didn't want to tell Bambi about his dream, honestly; he knew keeping shit from his loved ones wasn't the best idea, but at the same time, he just didn't want to feel all the feelings it made him feel. He climbed back into bed. "Are you going to stay?" he asked, looking at her. Something in his face said he wanted her to, even if he was always open to her choices.

"Yeah, of course," Bambi said, a look on her face that said that she'd never considered an alternative. "Come here." She held her arms out to him, and he scooted over to her, enjoying the feeling of her embrace. Also, his face was pressed into her chest, which was a fucking win as far as he was concerned. He pulled away after a few blissful moments, straightening back out. Bambi stared at him for a long moment, admittedly lost in his dark brown eyes. She thought of nothing, but felt that tug from before - that need she'd had to go to him. Wordlessly, she leaned forward, and began kissing him.

Not so long after, clothing was discarded. Rolling around like weasels was always a good way to cheer someone up after incredibly violent and detailed night terrors that they repressed, so it was no surprise that the energy level was fairly high. Unfortunately for Bambi, as she lost herself in his eyes again, on the verge of ecstasy, a vision ripped through her, and her gasps became less of pleasure and more of fear. Leon, though, realized immediately what was happening, despite it not having happened in a long time, but she had gripped him so tightly that he almost couldn't sit up.

It wasn't until her fucking eyes rolled into the back of her head that she let go of his arms, and he was able to sit up, not really throwing her off of him, but getting out from under her and kneeling next to her as she sort of fell into a ball on the bed. "Bambi, Bambi, come back," he coaxed. Fucking Christ, this was a long one.

She began to cough, like she'd been holding her breath for too long, and he gently patted her back, offering her some of the blanket as she came back into the present. "Fuck," she hissed, accepting it shakily. She jerked her hand away from his, though, and shifted so that he couldn't reach her back anymore. He held his hands up to show that he wasn't going to try and touch her any further, and she took a few moments to get her bearings.

During that time, Leon got up and got her water. When he brought it back, she was sitting up, her chemise back on, and she was staring intently at the carpet. "Here," he said, holding it out. "How do you feel?" His voice was laden with genuine concern; he didn't know if he loved her or if he was just so attached to her. He didn't know if love was a good word, considering he didn't really know what love was, if his past was to be understood in clarity. The word was so tainted to him now, but he knew that he cared about her, that was certain.

She was quiet for a while, and then looked at him. She looked like she was in physical pain for a moment, shaking her head as she remembered the scattered pieces she saw. She could only see them as non-linear, past/present/future all colliding on top of one another, and it hurt her fucking head.  "Who the fuck is Cassandra?" she asked, her voice stressed and betraying her fatigue.

The glass of water slipped from his hand and fell to the floor.

"Come out, it can't be that bad," Bambi called. She was seated on a soft grey couch in the back of a clothing store, though seated didn't really describe it so much as she was draped across her best friend Reese. She had her feet over the arm, and was sprawled across both cushions, a pillow beneath her head that was nestled on Reese's thigh. Reese was angled the same way she was, and he was tossing trail mix into Bambi's mouth every so often. So far, she was catching most of it.

"Did you pick this out?" Leon's voice said from behind the curtain. "I'm not wearing this." He stood in the spacious dressing room, staring at himself in the mirror. He looked fucking ridiculous. "What is this even supposed to be?" he demanded.

"Haven't you ever seen the Three Musketeers?" Reese asked, popping some M&M's into his mouth. It was the only part of the trail mix he cared about; Bambi could enjoy all the raisins and nuts she wanted.

"Yeah, when I was a kid," Leon said. "They didn't dress like this."

"No, the new one. Look, just come out so I can see you!" Bambi snapped.

Leon heaved a sigh, and then drew back the curtain.

"Wow," Reese said. "That is a lot of gold brocade."

"Ohhhh my gooooood," Bambi breathed, sitting up. "Leon, you look - "

"Fucking ridiculous," he spat. "What are these, bloomers?" He turned around, gesturing to the turquoise blue fabric of the pants. "The only thing I like about this is that it comes with a cape." At that, he tossed the gold sheet around, striking a pose for a second, and then reverting back to his irritated stance. "Bambi, if I dress up like this, you are dressing up like Lady DeWinter."

Reese snorted, and Bambi swatted a hand back idly as she laid back down, missing him entirely, but succeeding in smacking the trail mix bag. "No, I've already got my costume," she informed him. "It's you that's been entirely frustrating about this whole ordeal."

"I don't see why I can't just go as like, Bucky Barnes or something," Leon said. "You'd think you'd jump at the chance to put black eyeshadow all over my face."

"You really think you're Bucky Barnes material?" Reese shot, arching a brow. He abandoned the trail mix, laying a hand down on Bambi's midsection casually. "Please. You're more like angsty Batman. You practically scream DC to me with your broody eyes and secrets," Reese said, raising his other hand to wiggle his fingers as he spoke.

Leon huffed. "Well, I'm out of ideas."

"How are you guys doing back here?" Roxy asked, interrupting them. "Oh - wow, that is... that is something," she said, looking at Leon.

"See?" he shouted, jerking his hand to point at her. "Even the girl who runs the store thinks it's stupid!"

"No, no," she said, though she was on the verge of laughing and was absolutely not convincing them at all. "I just, uh, hm - I don't think being swathed entirely in gold and blue is your colour story," she said tactfully. "I like the throwback to another era, but this is way too much fashion for you. No, what we need is..." she put a finger to her chin, thinking. "Hey Whit, can you come here for a sec?"

A second redhead emerged. "What's up? Hey, Draco, hit me," she said, turning to Reese and opening her mouth.

Reese rolled a blue M&M around in his fingertips, sizing Whitney up. "With pleasure," he said suavely, and tossed the candy to her. She caught it expertly, and gave him a wink. Reese and Bambi exchanged glances, grinning to eachother. Sometimes, he missed his twin in crime, but sometimes, not sharing was okay, too.

"What are you thinking for tall, dark and smoldering here?" Roxy asked, approaching Leon and slowly circling him.

"Ooh, something fantasy-medieval-ish, but not Orlando of Buckingham," she said, gesturing to the outfit he wore. "What about..." She trailed off, walking to a massive rack of costumes, and began digging. She pulled out a simple white linen shirt and a pair of black leather breeches. "Can you grab me the boots for this?" she asked, looking over her shoulder at her sister, who nodded and vanished into the stock room.

"Once your done trying to get your way out of that golden maze, try this," Whitney said, handing him the clothing.

"What is it supposed to be?" Leon asked, suspicious.

"You'll see," Whitney told him, raising her brows. Roxy reappeared, and she took the boots and handed them to him as well. "Quickly, now, we're closing soon."

Leon disappeared, mumbling things that they couldn't hear but were surely not positive. He was happy, at least, to strip out of that fancy bullshit they'd convinced him to try on. Why had he let Bambi and Reese drag him here? He should have lied and said he had to work for the Halloween party, but Bambi was looking forward to it so much. He was incredibly suspicious of what she was going to be, too. Knowing her, she'd take one of her brews and just shapeshift into something, which he would consider cheating, and he would 100% inform the costume contest people of.

He pulled on the top and bottoms, and sat down to tug the boots up. He glanced quickly in the mirror, pausing for a moment. Why did he look familiar? He looked like a character out of something he'd seen recently, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Slowly, he brushed his hair out of his eyes, staring at himself critically. He needed a haircut, that was for sure. But, moreover, he looked tired. Like, tired tired. It wasn't that he wasn't getting enough sleep, either - it was this magic in him. He felt like it was going to eat him from the inside out at times like this.

"Babe, come on!" Bambi yelled.

When he came back from out of the curtain, Bambi and Reese were both sitting up, with Whitney between them. Christ, he thought to himself. When he had been more adventurous... He rolled his eyes, dismissing the thought. "What do you think?" he asked.

"What are you supposed to be?" Bambi asked, genuine confusion on her face. "You look so familiar."

Reese snapped his fingers, sitting forward suddenly. "Prince Caspian!" he shouted.

"Winner, winner, chicken dinner!" Whitney said, slapping his leg. Her hand lingered a moment, which Reese positively did not miss. "What do you think? It's fantasy, but not glitter and gold."

Leon shrugged. "I like it," he said honestly. "It's simple. It's just like, three things. I could probably find a sword or something to accessorize, but - you don't think people will ask what I am all night?"

"No, I think they'll know," Bambi said, a tone to her voice he didn't trust.

"Bambi, what are you going as?" Leon asked, for the hundredth time.

"Weeeeeell," she began.

"Oh, for fuck sake, you two lovebirds kill me," Reese interjected. "She's going as the White Witch."

Whitney clapped her hands, and jumped off the couch. "Okay, so one Prince Caspian costume, coming right up! Bambi, you already got everything you needed from us earlier this week, right?" she asked, lingering at the entrance of the dressing room. When Bambi nodded, Whitney gave them a little wave, and went to go ring everything up.

"You were gonna go as the fucking White Witch and you were actually going to let me dress up like Buckingbloom?" Leon asked as they stood at the counter to checkout.

"No!" Bambi said. "No, I just... really wanted to see what you'd look like in all that silly royal frippery," she admitted. "Can you blame me?"

"A little," he said hotly. When she leaned over to give him a kiss on the cheek, he smiled. "A little less, then."

"Oh? How do I get the blame meter down to not at all?" she asked, nuzzling his neck a little.

"Aw, that's so cute," Roxy said, interrupting them as she read off Leon's total. "You guys are gonna have a great time at your party, I can feel it," she said, which gave Leon a slight pause. He looked at Roxy as she ran his card and handed it, and his bag, back to him, and inwardly grimaced. That was a fucking Fae if he'd ever seen one. Aloud, he said, "Thanks so much, you two, have a good night," and headed for the door.

"Damn," Reese said as soon as they got outside. "Those sisters? I'm getting crazy energy spikes off of them."

"Yeah," Leon said dryly. "Fucking Fae."

Bambi perked up. "Really? I didn't even realize," she muttered.

"Let's be real, Blake, when Leon's around, you don't realize anything outside of his sphere," Reese japed, opening the door of the car and sliding in.

"That's not fair," Bambi snapped. "You'd only realize his sphere too if you know how bi-"

"Bambi," Leon warned.

"How bright it is," she corrected herself.

"Right," Reese said. "Anyways, I got their number, so, it wasn't a total bust. That and seeing Leon in those fancy digs. Dude, you gotta dress like that at least once a month. Do it like, the first Monday of every month."

Leon rolled his eyes, but Bambi only picked up on Reese's energy and the two of them gabbed at him mercilessly the entire way home.

The part of Marrakesh Jonathan was in smelled like shit and sweet orange blossom - and one was winning. It was leather, though not shit, actually; the tanneries permeated the air with their putrid smell, and Jonathan actually had to get used to it because otherwise he couldn't go outside without gagging. He coped with it, though, eventually, despite being called a bitch by everyone else on his team. There were four of them there, just to grab a target and get the fuck out, but the timing had to be absolutely right, and so they planned to stay two weeks. Since it would be weird if 4 American men just stayed in their hotel rooms the entire time they were there, Jonathan felt it only right to go out and experience the city.

He ventured into the city and wandered through the souks, eyes catching every movement around him. The trouble was, there was so much movement, it made him a little dizzy. He realized after wandering through the maze for several minutes that he was turned around, and unfortunately it was incredibly easy to become lost in them, especially with how busy it was becoming. He felt a bump behind him, and whipped around, ready to absolutely wallop a pick-pocket, but he found himself face to face with a woman - a blonde woman, from what hair he could see peaking out from under her covering anyways. Some tourists refused to adhere to Arabic custom, and it made a lot of trouble for them.

"Parlez vous anglais?" she asked, blinking her eyes rapidly.

"Yeah," he said, feeling a little dumbstruck. Her eyes were so blue.

"Good, because I'm lost," she confessed. "Do you know the way out?"

"Not at all," he laughed. "But I think I've passed that same stall about three times now, so I'm feeling less and less confident every pass."

She made a face. "Well, guess I'll treat it like a maze and only follow the right side until I get lead out of here. Thanks anyways," she added.

Jonathan stood there for a minute, and then called after her. "Wait up! I'll go with you - if that's okay."

There were multiple reasons for this - the first of which NOT being that she was gorgeous. It was easier to blend in if you looked like a tourist, and what ensemble wasn't complete without the typical American husband-wife duo? The second reason was that she was gorgeous, though. He wondered why she was even there.

"Sure," she said. As they walk, she introduced herself. "Chase."

"Jonathan," he replied.

"Not John?" she asked, giving him a sideways glance.

"Ah, no. It's not my thing." He paused. He was about to tell her that he usually only heard his last name, but honestly, that made him sound military, and then he'd have to explain more, and in a public setting that was not happening. Nor was it happening with a complete stranger.

"Fair enough," she laughed.

The two walked for another ten minutes or so, doing exactly what Chase said she was going to do, and eventually found a break in the souk that opened into the rest of the city.

"Thank fucking god," Jonathan muttered. He glanced down at his watch and realized that he had been gone way longer than he'd originally said, and his buddies were probably wondering where the fuck he was. He hadn't even bothered to look at the little burner phone he'd gotten; he'd been too occupied looking at - well, Chase.

"Well, it was nice to meet you," she said, holding out her hand to shake his. As he took her hand, she started for a second, her grip tightening on his own as she gasped. She released it - more like dropped it, pulling her own back like she'd been burned.

"Chase?" he asked, giving a cursory glance at his hand to see if there was like, a bee in it or something.

"In the cafe - don't take the back exit. The door will be rigged as an IED. Take your man and walk out the front. There will be two men waiting to your right, but you can handle them," she sputtered, like she was describing something that she was seeing. She looked at him, focusing her eyes on his, and reached out, grabbing his arm forcefully.

"Don't use the back door, Jonathan. You, and your men, will die."

Jonathan stared at her, hard, and then nodded. "I don't know what you're talking about, but if I go into any cafes, we'll be good little boys and won't try to skip out the back," he assured her.

She fixed him with a frown, then let go of him. "I'll see you around,"  she said, offering no other explanation, and turned to walk away.

"I mean, probably not - we're two Americans meeting randomly in Morocco," he called after her, thoroughly shaken by what she'd said - and a little irritated, if he was honest with himself, because he really didn't need someone spouting his plans on the surface streets like that.

Without glancing over her shoulder, she said, "No, we will. Pretty sure about that one, too."

Jonathan stood there, utterly mystified, then felt his phone going crazy in the folds of his clothing. "Oh fuck," he muttered, trying to answer it before it stopped. "Yeah Shaun, what's up?"

"Dude where ARE you? We just got pushed up to tomorrow. Get back here, NOW."

"What?"

Loic was staring at her critically, and she had no idea why. She set the shopping tote down on the pristine marble countertop and put her hands on the counter, leaning a little. She gave a little head shake, still staring back at him, her gold eyes locked on his, full of suspicion. When he didn't say anything, she pushed off the counter and folded her arms.

"You look different," he said. His voice was almost accusatory. He still remained where he was, his body in the doorway of the kitchen, leaned against the frame of the door.

"No I don't," Selene said, head tipping back in indignation. "How do I look different from three hours ago when I left?" she demanded.

They did this a lot, lately. Ever since he'd had the human experience, he'd become strange - not really cold to her, but more standoffish than usual. She didn't feel his draw much either; she was unsure if it was because he had finally listened when she told him that he didn't need to burn extra energy just to keep her there. She wasn't planning on leaving. "You are my entire life," she'd told him. He hadn't said anything in response, just grunted and went back to staring out the large glass patio doors into the darkness.

"You do," he insisted. He pushed off of the door frame and approached her. Loic had known for a while now why she looked different. He wondered if she was lying to him - playing some game with him, trying to hide things as though it would have worked. But when he took a quick glance into her thoughts, he saw nothing but confusion - and irritation, with him mostly - and something about someone taking the last of whatever it had been that she'd been looking for when she was out.

"Okay, well, when you figure out what it is, you let me know," she said tersely. She wasn't about this married-couple argument lifestyle. They picked at eachother from time to time, but she wasn't in the mood. She had been tired for the last few days, far more than usual, and it was routine that he found her in bed in the afternoon fast asleep. She was feeling that fatigue now, but she was also hungry, and so she set forth pulling the things out of the tote that she'd bought - ingredients for dinner, presumably.

She pointedly ignored him as she began pulling pots out, filling one with water and setting one aside. She placed a jar of spaghetti sauce in the pot she'd set aside, and opened a box of spaghetti, carefully snapping the noodles in half.

"Shit," she muttered. She'd meant to do that after the water was boiling. "Where is my mind today?"

She turned from the stove after clicking on the burner, discarding the noodles in the pot with the jar in it for now. Loic was right there, and she gasped as she bumped into him. "Fucking hell!" she snapped. "What? What is your problem?"

"Selene," he said, warning in his voice. "How are you feeling?"

"What? I'm feeling like you're in my way, god damnit." She felt her cheeks warm as her blood pressure rose; fuck but he made her feel so hostile sometimes. She had grown inexplicably aggressive over the last two weeks. Probably because it was so damn hot out, she wagered. They kept the house cool but it was never enough for her.

He held his hands up, letting her know that he was backing off. Wordlessly, he turned and left the kitchen, missing the angry gesture Selene made in his wake. He went to the patio, shutting the door behind him. He could still see her in the kitchen, and glanced over his shoulder as she completely wrote off whatever had just happened and went back to making her dinner. He shook his head, then glanced back out into the yard, and beyond. The sun was close to setting, finally. Daylight savings was a whole joke. It was almost 8 o'clock. He tapped the cell phone in his hand, wondering if it was worth it to call that voodoo man and even bother with an inquiry.

Selene ignored him for the rest of the evening. He was in one of his pensive, brooding sort of moods, and she had long ago given up the idea of being attracted to some Byronic hero type - which Loic had never been. She blamed it entirely on him having been turned human, even for however brief it was. He needs to get the fuck over it, she thought, angrily eating her spaghetti, which was overcooked and not very fulfilling. After she'd finished, another wave of exhaustion hit her, and she decided to just call it.

"I'm going to bed," she told him, hair still damp from her shower. The heat had made her feel a little light-headed, which was new, but she chalked it up to stress - and the fact that the water was damn near scalding. For someone who disliked a hot house, she sure enjoyed bathing in what felt like lava.

He had been reading through some old text in their living room, the television on but not on anything he'd been watching. He looked up, and then closed his book suddenly. "I'll join you."

"I - okay? You don't have to. I'm really tired. Stay out here and do your thing, it's fine," she insisted. She honestly didn't want him to come to bed; she didn't feel like laying there while he stared at her, trying to figure out whatever "difference" he noticed. Oh yeah, she knew he was still on that, even if he'd let it go. Because, Loic never really let things go.

He was already standing up, hand on the remote to turn the television off. "No, it's okay. I'm done for the night. I'll lock up." And with that, he set about the house, checking doors and turning off various lights. She knew he'd make a pass at the thermostat and turn it up from what she kept trying to set it at. As much as she insisted that 62 was perfectly fine for the interior, he disagreed. This had been a new thing, of course, and it only added to the list in his head of things that had changed about her. Avians didn't like the cold.

She was already in bed when he came in; deliberately, she'd turned off the bedroom light. He was a vampire, he could see in the dark. She heard him shuffling around, and she could tell he was trying to be quiet, despite knowing that she was wide awake. She sighed, closing her eyes. Oh, they fucking burned, too. It was like she hadn't slept in days. When she felt him get into bed, she rolled over onto her side, facing away from him.

"Selene," he said softly. The darkness seemed to swallow his voice up; or maybe he was just trying to be that quiet. "I know you're not asleep."

"Of course I'm not asleep," she said matter-of-factly. She felt hot all over again, and violently kicked until she had maneuvered the thick blankets off of herself, exposing her to the elements. The ceiling fan was on, at least. She reached up, pulling at her thick blonde hair, and piled it on top of her head, trying to relieve her neck from the heat of it. "It's too fucking hot."

She heard him sigh, which was new to her, and looked over at him incredulously, eyes wide in the dark. For a moment, she wanted to ask if he was okay, but she thought better of it. "Are you still brooding?" she settled on.

"I've got a lot on my mind," he replied.

"Story of my fucking life," she muttered. She saw movement in the darkness, and then felt his hand on hers. His touch was gentle - it was funny, Loic had spent his lifetime razing cities and had even cut a kingdom or two down to size, but here he was, touch as light as a feather, his fingertips brushing against her own. In spite of herself, she laced her fingers with his. It was so easy for him to do this, to just melt away her bad moods - but this time, oddly, she still felt that hostility in her chest.

"How do you feel?" he asked. "Honestly."

"Honestly?" she parroted. She looked over at him, then moved to sit up, letting go of his hand. She crossed her arms, and even in the dark he could observe that she was closing herself off. "Tired. Irritated. All the fucking time. It's not you, either - though today you contributed," she added with a laugh. "I don't know what my problem is," she sighed. "Maybe I just need you to do the magic thing again," she suggested, though it was obvious by her tone that wasn't what she wanted. "Make me feel better."

He sat up, too. "Selene, if that's what you really want, than I can, but I don't think it's a good idea," he said, and it gave her a little pause, because it was uncharacteristic of him in the sense that he wanted such rigid control he wouldn't turn down the offer.

"What?" she asked, unable to hide the shock. She uncrossed her arms, moving her body so that she was facing him, and drew her knees up. "So if I asked you, right now, to just - make it go away," she said, gesturing in reference to her shitty mood, "you would say no? I want to be absolutely sure that's what I understood you said."

"I would refuse you, yes," he admitted.

"Okay," she said, her tone dismissive and finite. She started to get up. "I don't know who you are, or what you've done with my Loic, but when he gets back, tell him I'll be on the couch."

He reached out, grabbing her before she could fully get out of bed. His arm hooked across her chest, and she felt the warmth of his body pressed against her back. "No, no running," he told her.

"Loic," she said firmly. "Let go."

"No."

"Then I will let go for you," she snapped. She grabbed his forearm, meaning to pry it off of her, but he squeezed just a little, and despite her strength, he was simply stronger. "Loic, STOP." She was getting mad again, but this time it wasn't just that mild irritation of fatigue that had been at her all day, it was actual fucking anger. And, if she would admit it, fear. He was very, very rarely rough with her. Despite their relationship and its complexities, he respected boundaries.

"No," he said again. "We need to talk about this."

Selene took in a shaky breath. "Please let go."

He did that time, cut from the fear that he heard in her voice. She got up immediately, putting distance between them. "Selene, wait," he said.

"No." What the fuck is wrong with me? she thought to herself. She felt like she was about to - to cry? Was that was that sensation was? It had been so long since she'd cried, it was such an unfamiliar burn in her throat - but, yes, she felt hot tears spring into her already burning eyes, and she went for the door.

Loic was there before she could open it, using the perks of being a vampire to his advantage. He grabbed her, this time far more gently, shushing her as she cried. "I'm sorry," he said, and he meant it.

"Why are you being so weird?" she asked, struggling to contain her small sobs before they gave way to larger ones. Fuck she felt overwhelmed all of the sudden. "What is wrong with me? Why am I crying, I should be hitting you," she sobbed. Fuck, she was so frustrated.

"Selene, we're going to go back to the bed, okay?" he said, coaxing her like a scared animal back to the king-sized bed. Once he got her seated, he brought a tissue to her, and knelt before her, placing his hands just above her knees. "I didn't mean to upset you," he told her. "I'm sorry, I just wanted you to stay, and to tell me what was wrong."

"Just make it go away," she demanded. She was so tired of feeling tired. Hell, she was tired just sitting here, and she felt a sinus headache creeping in. Crying was the worst.

"I can't, love, I can't," he murmured, taking her free hand and kissing it lightly.

"Why not? It's never been a problem before. Is this because of the human thing? I told you that you didn't have to waste energy but that doesn't mean you don't have to use it at all, ever."

He chuckled. "Oh, I think it's about the human thing, but it has very little to do with magic and a lot more to do with nature."

She had finally stopped crying, but now was quiet, unsure of what to say to that. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Here, lay down," he instructed. "I'll explain," he said, holding a hand up as she opened her mouth to protest. "I will explain, but I think you should get back into bed, first."

She felt utterly drained, now, having been wrung out by rapid fire emotions that changed on a whim, and so she did as she was told. Her body felt heavy and her head felt fuzzy - and ached, now. When he was settled next to her again, she reached out, putting her hand on his chest. "Will you tell me now?"

He could hear the fatigue in her voice. Christ, if this was any indication of how the next several months would go, he was going to have to seriously consider consulting one of those gypsy girls for some sort of potion to calm her nerves. Or his. "Do you remember the second night that I was mortal again?" he asked, placing his hand atop hers.

She looked confused, but then smiled a little. "Yes. You wanted to watch the sun set, and have dinner outside on the patio. You complained about mosquitos, and we had too much wine. We - " she paused. "Why are you asking me this?"

"Selene, I was mortal," he told her.

She just stared at him for a moment, and then her mind started racing.

"No," she said softly - unsure if it was to him, or to herself. "No. No, no, that's not how - I don't - no, no, no," she repeated. She tried to sit up, but Loic had been prepared for that, and stopped her.

"Calm down, Selene - calm down," he told her, already having seen her panic session on the horizon. "Breathe," he coaxed.

She did as she was told (for once), but she felt numb all over as she tried to breathe.

"Your kind run hot, but you've been running extra hot the past few weeks," he explained softly, beginning to tick off all of the indicators to his suspicions. "You've been angry to some degree steadily, mostly at me, but at just about anything else in your radius - including the toaster," he added.

"That toaster knows what it did," she hissed.

"Yes, but the fact still remains, level-headed people don't fling it into our neighbor's yard when it burns their toast. You've been tired all of the time, which is out of character for you, as much as you'd like to argue about the other two points. And, finally, tonight when you made that garlic bread, you took one look at it, and gagged so badly you went to the sink thinking you'd puke. Yes, I saw that," he added, giving her a Look.

"Okay, but none of this means - "

He placed a hand on her abdomen, and she stopped talking, the contact making her uncomfortable.

"And I can hear it," he concluded.

"Loic, I can't," she said, pushing his hand away. "We can't. Okay? This can't."

He fell silent, and she could see in the dark that he simply nodded. She thought he'd say something else, or protest, but all he said was, "Okay." She felt his fingers brush her hand gently, and then he shifted, turning his body from hers and laying down, mirroring exactly what she'd done when he'd come in at the beginning of all of this nonsense.

She sat there for a while, knowing that he wasn't asleep, and wondered what the hell he was thinking. What did he expect to accomplish by this? How could he possibly think that this would work out? If she was being honest, she knew that Stockholm Syndrome had played a large part in her upbringing, and now she felt okay - she had seen her family, she had been offered freedom - but she stayed. Did that make her a monster? Would bringing a child into this make her a monster? She looked over at his silent form, and pursed her lips. Part of her wanted to get up and go to the couch, but there was another part of her that wanted to stay.

She finally slid down under the covers, rolling to the opposite side of the bed. It felt cold now; or was that just because she was running so hot? She curled up into a ball, still lost in her thoughts, when she felt Loic moving. He was at her back again, and slipped an arm around her to hold her, dropping a kiss on her shoulder.

"I'll figure it out," she told him. "We'll figure it out."

"I know," he replied. And then she felt a warm sensation rush through her, the familiar feeling of his magic creating a calm within her. "Get some sleep, love," he whispered. She didn't even hear it - she was already gone.