Night's Omen

Prompt List

• Mischief
• Silence
• Secrets
• Perfection
• New Year's
• Introduction
• I Can't
• Seek
• Night
• Drink

Mischief

  This thread takes place in the past.

  Mother and father were gone again. She didn't know where they were. Maybe they were in the house, maybe they were out -- it didn't matter. They never acknowledged her, and she never acknowledged them. She didn't know why that was the way it was, but she didn't seem to have any feelings about it. She was in the Room again, the one her father told her to stay in so that she wouldn't "get in the way". She wasn't clear how she was getting in the way, but she would do her best not to, and that meant to stay in the room.

  The room was dark. No windows. Nothing in it. Just the carpet. She didn't have any toys to bring in with her, ("Too much noise," he would say) so she would just sit in the corner. Sometimes she would stand, sometimes she would lay down. She would stay in there for days at a time, only going to the bathroom and getting small portions of food or water when she found them necessary. She turned it into a game. "See How Long You Can Stay in the Dark Room Without Making a Sound". Victoria was very good at the game. She made it a week or two without making any sound at all.

  She was playing this game with herself when she realized that her parents had not come back in a while. She left the room quietly, and went down the hall. There was nothing - no signs of life, at least. Victoria sat her mother's chair at the kitchen table, feet dangling above the floor. No sound, just the swish-swish of her legs. She picked up her mother's scissors, examining them carefully. My, but they were sharp. She'd never played with scissors before. What sort of game could she come up with? She looked around, but there was no paper she could find appropriate to cut, and even then, what would she cut it into? Dolls? Snowflakes? None of those things really appealed to her.

  She looked down at her hand, and then gingerly sliced it open with the scissors. It stung, but only for a moment. She examined the cut more closely - it wasn't deep. Surface cut, already healing. Suddenly, she had an idea for a new game. "How Deep Can You Cut Yourself With the Scissors Before it Hurts?" She decided she would do it until it hurt, and then keep doing it until it stopped. What a fun game it would be!

Separately from Stefan, Victoria had run down to the cells for her own purposes. She stepped over fallen bodies of Raven Guard, steeling herself as she continued on. What the fuck was happening? It seemed that the Midnight Hierarchy was finally collapsing in on itself, and though Victoria would be irritated to find a new home, she had long since stopped trafficking and had concentrated on more valuable things - knowledge, mainly.

She had down in the cell a particular Serpiente who had knowledge of all sorts of things about the royal family - things that were not common knowledge. She'd been threatening him with violence, but he'd only spit in the white viper's face when she did. Now, she would offer him a choice - freedom, or die in the cell when the building eventually turned to rubble.

She passed the hullaballoo with Stefan, Raphael, and the blonde in the cage, ignoring it all for the time being. Something told her to go back, but she had to get what she came for, first. As she approached the cage, she saw that he was already up and moving.

"Lorenzo," she said, her voice hurried, but hushed. "Tell me what I need to know, and you walk out these doors, and we will never see eachother again."

The Serpiente regarded her for a moment, dark eyes narrowing. "You're scared," he said slowly. "Why are you scared?"

She stared at him, then set her jaw. "Fine," she said quickly, taking her hands off the bars and turning. "You can rot." She was walking fast, too, and almost didn't stop when he called out to her. Almost. She turned, slowly, face curiously devoid of the satisfaction she would've otherwise had. Truth was, she was pretty sure that the longer she stayed, the shorter her lifespan was becoming. She approached the bars again, this time arms folded tightly. She didn't come as close as she had before, either.

He sighed, resting his head against the bars. "Oh, the things you do to me, daughter of Maeve," he said softly. He looked up at her, and for a moment said nothing.

"Well?" she asked impatiently.

Quietly, he told her what she wanted to know.

As she opened the door to his cell, he regarded her with a wistful expression. "You know, if you would have just been straight with me, I would have told you anything you wanted to know," he informed her, his accent obvious as he spoke.

She stared at him for a long while, then blinked. "No, you wouldn't have. Your kind are hardwired not to betray eachother."

He reached out, touching strands of her blonde hair. Victoria didn't flinch, but she did clench her jaw a little.

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe. But for you? I would have given you the world had you asked."

She rolled her eyes, slapping his hand away. "You'd better give yourself the world and get the fuck out of this building before it caves in," she snapped.

"Well, now that I'm going to be a wanted man for selling secrets, maybe we'll see eachother again, daughter of Maeve," he said, giving her a half-bow before turning and walking casually toward the stairwell.

Maeve stood by the cell a second longer, and then went back the way she came. Where was Stefan? She was going to offer to grab Desten and get her to safety, knowing his predilection for violence might tempt him to stay around and fight it out. She didn't realize she was actually ahead of him, running an alternate hall in the goddamn maze that Midnight was, but as the egresses would all bleed into one eventually. Victoria was ahead of Stefan by only a few paces, but when she rounded the corner, she gasped loudly, raising her hand to her mouth. Her face reflected total shock from what Stefan could see, and he hurried up to find out what it was.

Imagine his surprise when there, in the hall, Betty stood. Her usually angelic face was half-covered in blood from a messy feed, and it stained the front of her light blue dress. Behind her was a body.

"Betty," Victoria said slowly. "What did you do?"

She saw Stefan come up on the other side of the hall, putting Betty squarely in the middle of them. She looked past Betty to Stefan, who was blinking rapidly as he tried to comprehend the scene. On the ground, Desten lay, throat completely torn open, limbs splayed with no defensive wounds. It seemed Betty hadn't given her a chance to fight at all.

"Oh my god," Victoria whispered.