Night's Omen

He'd thought he'd been a wreck since his brother had been turned.  He'd thought it, even if he didn't want to admit that he was making decisions he wouldn't have made before, even if he knew that he was being reckless and dangerous.  He'd thought it.  Now, he knew that he'd been alright.  He knew that because right now was the worst he'd been.

She started saying those words, those three simple words that were in every damn dream he had, and she just kept saying them.  Over and over.

Close your eyes.  Close your eyes.  Close your eyes.

How many times had he heard them?  How many times had he said them?  He had nightmares where anyone would say them, himself, Ben, the vampire, some other vampire he'd run into since.  Sometimes, his brother was the vampire.  Things changed in the dreams, but those words, they were all the same.  Close your eyes.

He couldn't take this.  No.  Not anymore.  No more.  ENOUGH!

"STOP!  SHUT.  UP!" he finally exploded, his gun in hand, but he didn't even know who he wanted to use it on.  He could shoot her, that would shut her up, it would make her stop, but it wouldn't make those words go away.  They were NEVER going to go away, they were always there, always waiting for him to close his eyes and start to drift off, and oh god, he couldn't listen to them anymore.  He could shoot himself.  He'd thought about it.  That would stop it.  That would stop everything.  He'd never have to hear those damn words again, or speak them again.  He'd never have to tell a little girl to close her eyes and not look before he shot a vampire that wanted to kill her ever again. 

No.  If he shot himself, he wouldn't be there to shoot a vampire and help a little girl.  The words, they had to continue.  As long as he was there to tell someone to close their eyes while he killed something, that meant that he was killing things that deserved to be killed.  If he killed himself, and he knew he deserved it as well, he couldn't kill those things.  Close your eyes.  The last time he'd said it, it HAD been a little girl.  She had to be 8 years old.  She'd looked at him like he was her whole world, like she knew that he was there and he was going to make the difference that would decide if her world just ended, and she'd closed her eyes when he told her to.  She hadn't looked, and she'd survived.

He wanted to, oh God, he wanted to.  He wanted to make it stop, make it all stop, never hear those words again.  He never wanted to see it all again, think about it all.  He was so tired of being alone, but he was afraid to be near people, afraid the next time he was telling someone to close their eyes, it would be because someone he had come to care about was the one being torn into, but he was so alone.  Something had to give. 

Looked like it just had.

He dropped the gun so quickly that it was almost like it burned.  It was just suddenly GONE because he couldn't hold it anymore.  If he did, he was going to shoot something, and there was nothing he could shoot.  His hands suddenly free, they flew up to his head, as though clutching at his skull and running them through his hair was going to do anything, and it wasn't.  It just gave him somewhere to focus his energy, because he was piquing, and he was going to do something violent or just completely overload if he didn't.  He'd have kicked the car if he could have focused on the present as much as he was focusing on the past, but that was unfortunately impossible at this point.  He had his eyes clamped shut, and even when they were open, he didn't give off the impression that he was really registering what he was seeing.  The vampires could have shown up right then, and he'd have welcomed it.  They'd stop it for him.

It only took maybe a moment for him to drop back into that squat, facing the ground and still clutching at his head as he had his breakdown.  His brain hadn't stopped its suicide run, but his energy was turning in on itself.  He wasn't going to lash out, not just yet, but he was shaking from the effort. 

"Stop, just make it stop, no more, just stop," he kept saying, and he wasn't paying any more attention than Posey had been.

They were a hell of a pair right then.

Swimming was a lovely venture. She'd not done it in so long. Kicking off her shoes, she dove in, fully clothed to the giant blue lagoon that seemed to swell up from the center of the earth, and she swam down towards the dark blue depths below. Further, further down, where the water changed from hot to cold, and it got harder and harder to move, because it was crushing her. Somewhere, through the water, she could hear someone yelling, saying something, but she couldn't make out what it was. She was sinking to the bottom, and when she tried to kick out, she realized that the bottom was a long way down - nothing for her to push up on. She was drowning, and what a peculiar thought that a vampire of all things should drown, but she felt the air being forced out of her lungs as the pressure began constricting upon her, squeezing the life out of her..

Chris' words cut through the fog, and all of those memories and emotions suffocating her, drowning her, crushing her - they were rewound, sucked back up, and she sat up, hands in the earth, scrambling backwards 'til she put a safe distance between them. He had the gun pointed at her, then himself, then at the ground - then at her, and himself again. He finally dropped it, and followed suit not long after. Posey still couldn't regain a solid grasp of reality. She was still sucking in cool breaths of humid air, trying to tell herself that she was alive, that she was here, now, in the forest, that she wasn't drowning or reliving memories or being attacked or anything else.

As she watched him break apart, she was flooded again with things - not memories, not tangible ideas, but emotions, broken thoughts. Unfinished sentences, things you meant to say but didn't, things you started to say and couldn't finish; things you never should have finished, but did. The vacuum effect of emotion was a strange thing, and she only wished she could see auras like Violet to appreciate the full beauty of it - if you could call it that. Posey was spiritual enough that she could. She got up, sort of, crawling to Chris, because she didn't trust her legs to carry her.

She remained within arm's reach, hands and knees, for a while - long enough that she realized he didn't know she was there. She sat on her knees, then, and reached out with a very, very careful, unsteady hand. She placed it on his shoulder, lightly, like a dragonfly landing on a lilypad - she was so scared he was going to snap, but she had to get him out of the forest, away. His dark emotions would attract them like crows to carrion, and Posey couldn't have that on her conscience for the rest of her life.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, voice nothing but sincerity, because Posey really was nothing if not sincere, in the end. She dared to rest her hand on his shoulder, waiting for the moment where she'd have to pull away before he swung 'round and cut it off.

She still didn't get it.  All those emotions she'd nearly drowned in, and she didn't get it.  He didn't mind if the vampires came, if his dark emotions drew them in like locusts on a fresh harvest.  He had nothing to offer but dying, diseased hatred anyway, so what did it matter?  No, he really didn't mind.  Let them come.

If they didn't come, he would go to them, sooner or later.

Posey couldn't see auras, which may have actually been for the best.  Would his have been a thing of beauty, or was it too wretched anymore to ever be considered such?  Right then, it may have even been a changing, pulsing, flashing thing, because he was self-destructing.  Explosions could be beautiful.  Maybe it would have been, but there was nothing beautiful about what it was doing to him.

When Posey reached out to touch him, he could have just as easily gone in two drastically different directions.  He hated vampires, of which she was one, so badly that having her anywhere near him could have set him off just because of that.  Even worse, he was such a wreck about being near anyone that might be hurt because of him that having her speak in that soft tone and touch him like that could have thrown him into a whole new flurry and inspired him to whip around and nail her.  He had that energy roiling around inside of him, looking for an outlet.  It'd have been so, so easy.

There was a polar opposite, though.  For as much as he flipped his shit over getting close to people, he wanted it.  He was so alone, especially with his brother gone, so very, very alone, and no matter where he went and what he did, he didn't have anyone.  He may as well have been the only one around, walking amongst the monsters and killing as many as he could, for all the good he got from the company of others.  He just, for once, wanted to relax into another person's company, to just let go and be broken and stop.  When she rested her hand on his shoulder like that, when she apologized, he could have lashed out at her.  He liked to lash out at people, to make them hurt because he was hurting and it just wasn't fair that he had to hurt so much, but he didn't.  He flinched instantly, that much was to be expected out of someone as high-strung as he was, but she stayed, and she said those two little words.

The two that he never heard.  Never.  He'd said them rarely himself, but nobody apologized.  Who was going to be sorry for him?  Nobody. 

Nobody except Posey, apparently.  Under any other conditions, he'd have laughed at her and probably thrown something painful her way, just to get her the hell away from him and what was looking to be a far more fragile balance than he'd thought.  It was too late for that, though.  She touched him, she offered her sympathy and just her presence and she apologized.  He just completely caved into it, and if that energy he'd had tearing through him had been a tangible, visible thing, it would have washed outward in a wave from him.  He just let go, and he'd be damned if the vampires came then.

Hell, he probably already was.

Posey felt nauseous again, for the first time in years. She could still remember what it felt like to have the contents of your stomach rolling around, ready to bubble up and come out, acid-tinged and tasting of bile as it poisoned your esophagus. She shuddered a little at her own thoughts, trying to brace herself against the emotional brain-dump Chris was doing. She couldn't, though. Her shields were non-existent thanks to needing to feed so badly her body was shaking.

When he did not hit her, which was all that she expected, really, she stayed very still. It wasn't until she felt the release that she moved again, this time to wrap her arms around him, burying her head against his shoulder. This was all Posey was, all she was good for. Comfort, maybe - or a whipping boy, if she could be such a thing. She wanted to take the pain other people had and displace it in herself. Chris was warm against her own cold body, and she tried to keep her touch as light as possible - she didn't want to alarm him, but, really, he needed someone. She felt bad it had to be her, considering how much he hated her - a hatred so strong that it was almost foreign to her, actually. But he needed someone, nonetheless, and Posey was all who stood out there with him, so Posey was all he got. She felt sorry that she was all she was.

"I'm sorry," she said again. She didn't know what else to say. She was sorry that she wasn't there to stop the vampire, she was sorry that she wasn't there to help him; she was sorry she'd been in the woods at all, and she was sorry that it was only her who was there now, and not someone... worth something more to him.

What a heartbreaker.

There was nobody who was worth anything to him, not anymore.  There were his grandparents, but they were so detached from his whole realm of reality that he didn't even think about them anymore.  He hadn't talked to them since Ben had...since he'd gone.  He didn't have anyone who was worth a damn thing anymore, and so, there was nobody who was worth more to him than Posey.  She was as good as anyone, really.  He just needed someone, anyone who would be there while he fell apart, because in the end, he might not be able to put himself back together.  If he'd had this breakdown alone, he may have stayed there for days or until he was found and killed, whichever happened first, though there was also the question of whether or not he would have let go without her there.

He might have kept building up that energy until it really exploded, and he might have actually killed himself, but she was there, and everything that had kept him distanced from the people around him all this time had collapsed like sand before ocean waves, and he was completely and utterly vulnerable.  It was terrifying, but there was only so much he could feel all at once.  Everything else was so overwhelming, now drowning in the feeling of there finally being someone THERE, and the terror of the situation just swirled right in there with the horrible understanding that she was going to leave, someone was going to take her away and he was going to be alone again. 

No.  There really wasn't anyone worth more to him right then than the body he turned his face into, that he disentangled his hands from his hair to hang onto, nothing more important than that voice.  "Don't leave.  Please."

Posey was at a loss. She didn't know what she'd gotten herself into, at this point. She knew that the one thing she was good at was comfort, helping - even if she wasn't a healer. She envied the Smoke line of Witches. Maybe in a different universe, when the stars aligned properly, she could be a Smoke, have that power to heal and to soothe. For now, all she had was herself, and she didn't quite think it was good enough.

She tried, though. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him forward and into her chest - not in a creepy sort of way (and very above her 'chest'). She looked like a mother to a child, with her head bowed over the top of his, chin rested atop his damp mop of curly hair. How they had become situated, with her legs at her side, Chris somehow cradled in her arms.. it was innocent. It was, Posey felt, what he might need at the moment, even if he didn't need her. She had no heartbeat for him to listen to, even though she did inhale and exhale like any human - she didn't need to do that, either, but she did, dutifully, as though gravity would cease and planets would drop out of the sky if she didn't.

"Sshhh, it's okay," she said softly. What else could she say? He'd been intending to kill her, and now...? She didn't know what else to do. She needed to get him up and moving, and away from this place. They were on the fringe, by the roadside yes, but still it might have been enough to draw unwanted attention.

He'd intended to kill her as much as he'd intended to kill himself, in all honesty.  It was a mess, and HE was a mess, but his initial intentions had been to find out where Mayhem was from her.  Killing her had been an option he'd been playing with, but it hadn't been definite.  If she'd been helpful, he might have considered letting her live in case he needed it again, especially given how badly she behaved like prey.  No guarantees, though.

Now, none of that mattered.  Now, he needed her.  Now, he was vulnerable and wouldn't have been able to even get himself out of there if he were alone.  He didn't WANT to be alone, wasn't sure if he could handle it.  He was always alone anymore, and it was just too much. 

No, nothing was okay, not anymore, not for a long time, and it could never be okay again, but if she could just make it feel okay for awhile, he'd do anything.  He'd do anything, say anything, anything to feel okay for just a little while. 

Could she do that?  Oh, God, if she could?

Posey held him, because she could feel the gravitational pull of his need. She did speak though, finally, and her voice was very soft, but firm. "Chris, listen to me. We need to get out of here, okay? This is not a safe place for us. Can you hear me? Do you understand what I'm saying?" she asked, pulling away from him to see his eyes.

She was so weak, she couldn't even mask what she was. She didn't have the energy to spare, so she was thankful that it was dark enough he couldn't see the depthless black where a honey-brown had been once. She did sigh a little, though, and tilted her head, trying to reach out to him, to see if she could get any semblance of coherent thought that pertained to the situation.

She really, really hoped he wasn't going to stab her in the face. She'd hate that.

At that point, he really didn't care, so long as he wasn't left alone.  If she wanted to go somewhere else and totally drain him, he wouldn't have argued.  He'd reached a limit that just didn't allow him to care much further than his immediate needs, and those were just a little skewed.  He'd cooperate until he could allow that internal breakdown to heal up enough for him to be able to really sift through what was going on with him.

That could be minutes or hours.

Hopefully for Posey, it'd be long enough to get out of there without him having a fit of some sort.  He was going to hate himself even more for losing it in front of a leech like this, but it wasn't like he'd been given much of a choice in the matter, and he was really going to have issues dealing with his opinions on this whole situation.  Sure, she was a vampire and should be killed just for that, but he was going to have to face the fact that she's the only one that'd been there for him in over a year.  That was going to make for some confusion and chaos in his brain.

Just what he needed.

Being unable to see the black eyes was for the best, since he didn't need something to set him off.  He nodded, understanding that she wanted to move even if he didn't have any will to other than hers.  He wasn't against moving, however, so it didn't much matter to him.  He just didn't care, and couldn't bring himself to.  At least that meant she wasn't going to get stabbed in the face.

Posey managed to get him into the car, but he seemed more or less to refuse to do anything, so with a groan, she reached over to his hand and held it firmly. "We'll come back for it later," she said firmly. She closed her eyes tightly, arguing with herself about what precisely she was going to do with him. She refused to just leave him there; what were her options, though?

"You can hate me for this later," she said finally. With the last bit of strength she had, she moved them. Things rolled by her in a blur, as they often did when she used that vampire power to shift from place to place in the blink of an eye. Colours, lights and sounds passed by her like a time-lapse photograph session, and when she steadied herself, she and Chris were standing in the front yard of Rochelle's home.

"Mom!" she called. Rochelle had earned the term mother from Posey, and she referred to her simply as that, because she was a good sort of woman who deserved the name. "Mom, can you come out here?" she yelled, voice weak and kittenish. The door popped open as the porch light flicked on, and Rochelle stuck her head out, looking somewhat like an owl with her short, frosted and graying hair and large brown eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses.

"Take him inside, get him some tea," she said, shaking her head before Rochelle could open her mouth to protest. "I'll explain later." She turned to Chris, fingertips brushing his cheek lightly. "My mom is going to look after you for a moment. I will be right back, okay?" she said, looking directly into his eyes. She reached up with her other hand, holding his face gently, making him look at her.

"Okay? Five minutes. I promise. Right back," she repeated again, for the benefit of his dazed mind.

Dazed was a damn good word for it.  He'd been trying to make sense of his world, of his surroundings and what was going on in his head, and then she'd zipped them out of there, and the only reason he kept his feet was because she was hanging onto him as he swayed in her yard.  That had thrown everything back into a frenzy of confusion, and her calling for her 'mom' only worsened things. 

Why?

Because even in his current state, he knew she was a vampire.  He was too messed up to care, but he knew she was, and vampires didn't have 'moms' and they didn't have normal houses and tea.  They tortured and killed people.  He killed them.  This whole reality he was seeing didn't make sense, and just wasn't computing.

Then, she said she was leaving.  She was leaving him with her 'mom', but she was leaving.  He might as well have been alone, for all he knew this woman.  Sure, he didn't know Posey very well, but that was different.  Don't ask his brain to rationalize anything.

"Five minutes," he repeated, taking a deep breath.  Five minutes alone when he didn't think he could stand being alone.  Alone with a lady who was probably a vampire that he didn't know.  Too many vampires, too much hurt, just too much.

"Oh my," Rochelle said. She held her hand out to Chris as she glided down the porch to him, finally taking his lightly when he just stood there, staring off into the darkness as Posey vanished. "Come inside, dear. She won't be happy if she gets back and she thinks I just let you stand out here all by yourself. Come, I've got some chamomile and vanilla tea already on," she said, her voice light and singsong.

Once inside, Chris would discover that the house was actually quite... charming. Knick-knacks and photos decorated the walls and the mantle above the fireplace, while soft carpet and rosy-toned paint and wallpaper made the house seem... cozy. The scent of sweet bread and cinnamon was everywhere, and a pretty girl sat on a couch in a room with no television, colouring gingerly with markers into one of those massive velveteen posters you could find at the store. She glanced up, surprised and showing it by a gasp, as Rochelle led Chris into the kitchen.

"That's Poppy, Posey's older sister," Rochelle explained, setting a mug down in front of him, regardless of what he wanted. "Do you take sugar?" she asked.

Their saving grace where cooperation was concerned was that he couldn't make himself care enough to find with this woman about going inside.  He wasn't happy and he was poised to plunge back into the mess of a head he had, but he was mostly calm right then.  The smallest thing could set him off again, but Rochelle was already being careful and not putting too much on him. 

Actually, she was so painfully normal that it knocked him for a loop.  Everything so far suggested that she was a vampire, just like Posey, but this was so absolutely human, like houses he'd been in with real, normal families living in them.  It didn't make sense to him, and the confused sort of look he gave Poppy emphasized that fact.  Of course, his ragged appearance probably didn't do much to help that, either.  It was so easy to think that he had to be a total disruption in the calm normalcy of their household, and completely forget that there wasn't anything normal about being vampires.  It was wrong, it was backwards, it was way, way messed-up.

But he had tea.

He stared at her and asked if he took sugar, and really, he didn't even know.  He couldn't remember the last time he'd bothered with tea.  His mother used to drink it.  Rochelle was a very motherly type.  "Do you?"

"Of course. It's too bitter without it. Poppy is the only one in this family who can drink it straight," she said, a disapproving noise between her tongue and the top of her mouth as she dropped a lump into his cup before he could answer. She glanced up to where Poppy stood in the doorway and frowned - the girl was clinging to the frame for dear life, it appeared.

High cheekbones were framed by light brown hair that gave the impression it was very fine and soft to the touch, and it might've curled given the right humidity conditions - but right now, she was hiding behind it, dark eyes peering forth at Chris. Her full lips pursed for a moment, and then she spoke. "Mom, I think maybe you should give Posey's guest a little space," she said softly, though her voice betrayed her fear. Poppy was hyper-sensitive to auras, and Chris' didn't tell her anything good. She seemed to have an aversion to him like a normal human should have had to her.

"Oh, Poppy, don't be like that. Posey never would have brought him here if she didn't think it was safe. I'm sure she has an explanation, which I can tell you I'm very interested to hear," the vampire mother-hen replied, lifting her own tea cup to her lips to take a sip. She withdrew it quickly. "Oh, heavens, it's still too hot. Watch your tongue, lad, you'll burn your tastebuds right off," she instructed.

Poppy remained where she was by the door, unwilling to come any closer to Chris. "I'm going to go to my room and read," she said, and with that, she had vanished up the stairs. Rochelle looked at her back as she left, and then her eyes flicked to Chris.

"Don't mind her. She's not used to company, is all. I'm sure you're just lovely; she's just a very timid girl," she explained.

It was no surprise that someone sensitive to auras would have an aversion to him, since his had to look like a swirling type of blackhole at this point, just waiting to suck everything around him in before he self-destructed.  He glanced up at the girl even as Rochelle assured her that Posey wouldn't have brought him there if he wasn't safe, then warned him about the tea.  He watched her, and she still looked like a human, moved like a human, behaved like a human.  But she was a vampire, wasn't she? 

Of course she was.  She knew he was dangerous without any indication from him.  That alone made her suspicious.  He was in a household of vampires.  He should have felt more hate and anger rising up than he did, and the only real explanation for that was the fact that he was just so completely overcome with grief and depression, apathy, all those emotions that turned in on himself rather than allowing him to channel them into violence.  Fury and hatred could be turned to violence.  Self-hatred and loneliness couldn't.  He'd have preferred to kill these confusing vampires, these pretenders, but why?  What were they doing, other than coloring, reading and drinking tea?  He was so dependent, so needy right then that he'd rather their company, even though they were vampires.

Poppy still had every right to distrust him.  He'd have killed them under normal circumstances, without a second thought.  She was right, but she was already gone to her room when he spoke of it.

"No, I'm not.  I kill vampires," he said, his tone deadpan, and he still hadn't touched that tea.  He looked at it again, as though he suddenly remembered it, and he picked it up to try a taste.  "My mother used to drink tea every night.  She hated coffee."

Since then, he'd only drank coffee.  No tea.  He hadn't even thought of that before.