Night's Omen

Danielle stopped abruptly in her steps, and the man may very well have walked right passed her - met only with blinking grey eyes. They were a descriptive shade at this point, but not like dove grey, or 'sky during snow' grey. No, they were 'frozen lake' grey. And narrowed.

"What do you mean?" The panic button was starting to go off.

"I mean, I seem to have a rather calming effect on you, correct?" he asked, stopping with her without thinking about it, and speaking as though what he was saying was nothing to be concerned with.  He didn't touch her red aura, not wanting to have her paranoid around him.  "Or at least, I usually do.  You're not very calm now, though.  Relax, ma petite, you're overreacting."

She was, and he felt a need to point it out to her, if only so that she might realize and calm herself.  It's something she needed to learn.

Danielle didn't think she was overreacting at all. Her mind started to work faster and faster - 'til she'd gone into a mental frenzy about who to trust and who to play ball with. Her eyes flitted back and forth quickly, and she took a step back for a moment, hands at her sides, fingers spread as she flexed the muscles in them.

It would become apparent now to Ash if it had not already by the way her entire stance had shifted that she was, indeed, caught up in a vicious cycle with herself - it stemmed from the lack of control. It was as though she relied more on base instincts instead of her head from time to time, and right now she was fighting to keep herself in place.

She tried to take a deep breath. Think logically. Nothing was working. She took another step back and met with the glass of a store window, a dull thud shaking her spine. What was she about to do?

Ash's eyes narrowed, quite aware of what was going on with her.  He wanted to reach out and calm her red aura, to help her regain control, and finally did.  He barely touched it, and he gave no indication as to what he was doing outwardly, nothing for her to interpret as a threat.

"Dani, think about it.  Have I ever done anything to you or your kin to make you even think that I was a threat to you?" he asked, knowing the answer was 'no'.  "I've hunted alongside you and your family, done everything I could to help all of you whenever you need it.  Do you honestly fear me?"

Sweat had begun to bead at her brow, her vanilla-blonde hair lightly damp between the night air and her own nerves. She was trying to remain focused on his voice, and slowly came back to herself - though it was partially from his doing.

"No, Ash, no, of course not." She started to laugh, and covered her face. Pretty soon, she was doubled over, and the laughter had gotten muddled, changing from humour to desperation. Finally, Danielle ended up in a crouch, stooped over, crying her eyes out.

She felt it all bubbling up near the surface again, that blind.. emotion. It was rage, pain, sadness, lust, love, happiness.. everyting that she was told she was not allowed to feel. She was -this- close to losing it all, and found herself fighting the urge to let a single terrific scream rip through her throat.

Now she wasn't even aware of Ash's presence on the street with her - it was just Danielle Vida, alone, in a dark part of the world, having her own little breakdown. Nobody to see, nobody to find out. Nobody to tell.

Normally, what to do in a situation like this, where a woman was obviously in need of comfort, which went against his preference for little to no physical contact, but this time he didn't hesitate before dropping to his knees to wrap her up in his arms.  He dampened her red aura some, making the emotions more manageable without stuffing them back down, which wasn't what she needed.

He talked softly to her in French, not even thinking for the moment that she wouldn't be able to understand it, and hoping she'd take comfort just from the sounds.  The last thing he wanted was for her to be upset, not when she needed to be strong for herself.  But then, that was why he was here; she was upset and spiralling downward, and he needed to be the buffer so she didn't crash and burn.  And he didn't mind.

She squeezed him so hard that, from her blood to a normal mortal, she might've broken bones. But Ash wasn't normal, and despite her intensity right now, she probably wouldn't have even made him uncomfortable with her iron grip.

"I have been going over this day in and day out and trying to find where exactly everything stopped being fine. Where everything changed and went from decently bad to just plain out of control, and I can't find a point to define. It wasn't Marcus, it wasn't Sarah. It's just something that HAPPENED when I turned seventeen, like suddenly all the precariously balanced normalcy within the killing and fighting just cracked. It seems like it's just...fated. Like it doesn't matter what I do, I always come back to this one spot in my life, in my mind, where I just can't..." she was babbling now, unsure of where she was going with that.

She suddenly let go of Ash and began wiping her face, as though 'other, normal Danielle' was back in control. "Oh Goddess, I've just gone and broken like a dozen rules," she said dryly, her typical inappropriate sarcasm bleeding through her strained voice.

He held her as she cried and started talking, not flinching in the slightest when she squeezed so tightly, and listening patiently as she let her troubles go for a short time.  He wanted her to let it out, to stop bottling it all up.  He was a good choice for such a thing, since she couldn't really hurt him.  If he knew that she was upset, he wasn't likely to take something personal if she verbally attacked him, and he could handle any physical attacks she decided to throw at him if she felt a need for violence.  Better him than someone else.

Then, just as suddenly, she let go of him and started drying her tears, and he didn't attempt to stop himself from reaching forward and wiping gently at her cheeks with the soft sleeve of the shirt he wore beneath his coat.  "You've done no such thing.  I don't know what you're talking about, breaking rules."

"Business first, life later," she said bitterly, referring to her family. She brushed herself off quickly. "I'm sorry you had to see that. Sometimes it just bubbles over."

She literally shook her head, shook away the dark cloud that wrapped 'round her mind. For the time being, anyways. "I think I'm going to have to bill Dominique for my therapy some day." There was a small laugh.

"Come on, Ash. Why don't we go get some drinks or something." She didn't mean alcohol - wouldn't have mattered anyways. She had to drink so much to get drunk, if she could actually GET drunk (hadn't ever drank that much to find out) that it'd be a waste of money. She meant a soda and a chair.

"Do you actually believe that business should come before life?" he asked, hoping that they hadn't drummed that into her enough.  He'd never believed it, having learned towards the end of his mortal life that all life was too precious to let business overwhelm it.  "And I don't mind seeing it, Dani.  Anytime you need to break down, I don't mind."

In fact, he was just happy she trusted him enough to have broken down in front of him, and he'd have let her do far more than cry on his shoulder if she'd needed it.  "That sounds like a good idea," he agreed, though he didn't specify whether he meant billing Dominique or going to get something to drink.  Perhaps both.  "Let's go."

"No, I don't," she said, a tired sigh caught in her words. "I was just being bitter." She paused, wondering about something for a moment, and then looked back at him.

"If someone wanted to find out everything about you, even though you'd covered your tracks..How long do you think it would take?" She didn't mean local authorities or the intraweb, she meant people like her; like him. Basically, she was trying to gauge how long she had 'til rumours would pop up about her little excursions overseas; and how long then 'til the truth would be dug out of them. How long she had to try and explain herself to her friend before someone else explained it for her with crime scene photographs.

She walked slowly, contemplatively, looking at the ground with her arms crossed. "I really want tea.. any good caf?s here that actually have tea?"

She did trust Ash. A lot. But she also trusted that bad things get punished eventually. She just wasn't sure exactly where his allignment was, and how much she was going to be able to divulge before he'd say, "Okay, you're crazy, you need help."

He nodded and slipped an arm around her comfortingly at her admission, though he hesitated in speaking when she asked how long it would take for someone to search 'him' out.  He had a feeling it wasn't him she was talking about.

"In a hypothetical situation where someone wished to track me down and find out everything they could about me...it would take at least a year and I'd find out and confront them before they reached me," he said bluntly.  "Unless it was a vampire.  That could take a matter of a week to a few months, depending on age and connections and whether they knew where to start or not."  

He stopped walking and looked at her, the expression on his face telling her quite plainly that he knew she wasn't asking for no reason.  "But then, you weren't referring to me, were you?  Knowing you, unless it was a vampire or a skilled hunter or the like, it would take quite some time, unless they had a decent lead.  Care to elaborate?"

Her question about the tea wasn't one he answered verbally, instead using the arm around her to pull her along.  He knew just the place.

"Not really. Let's just say that later you can relate our little talks to how I went bad," she said, a furrowed brow. She meant her telling him all the horrible things she thought, not that he actually drove her to make with the stabbing and kicking.

"But later, when I'm gone.. any rumor that you might hear, barring my death? It's probably going to be true." Danielle was thankful she didn't have some sort of Watcher to follow her and document all of her dealings, because she'd have to kill the little sprite before he published any of the works involving 'Danielle blows up a small building because it was easier than tracking someone for a few more days'.

She was asking because she wondered when someone was finally going to figure out she was behind all of it. Random events all over the world for sport, and business, and when they were going to put in the word that she was worth money to someone. She wondered who they'd send to do it, too. She looked at Ash out of the corner of her eye. She didn't see him as a contract killer, but then, he knew her better than anyone. She didn't think any monetary amount would push him into bringing her down, but she wondered on a moral standpoint how much she could really do before even the 'been there, seen that' life he'd led would fall short.

To be honest, he'd lived through quite a few wars, and those alone equaled out to a huge number of horrendous things, all of nightmare quality, and all that he'd gotten over with time.  Not that he knew what she was thinking, though he wished she'd tell him.

"I'm not so interested in this 'later' concept.  You'd think being immortal would have taught me patience," he remarked.  It had, but not in a case like this.  "What sort of rumors are these that I could hear?"

Danielle struggled with how to tell him that she was going to be making another trip back to Germany soon to finish up what she'd started three years ago. As they made it to the place he'd taken them and went inside, she sat down and rocked back in her chair. She needed to sit down for this.

"I have some journals and stuff I'll have to leave with you when I go for details," she said at first, trying to choose her words very carefully. She paused for a moment, not sure what to say next.