Spark {Victor}

[Sylvia Talbot]

Seraphine's eyes slid to the clock in the hallway of the waiting room. A quarter to midnight, of course, and her evening had been cut short. In her general fashion, playing the good part of a highschool attending teenager, she'd been going with some friends to a club. She looked at the girl next to her, who was rubbing her freshly bandaged arm gently, and offered her a smile that she'd trained to bleed to her eyes. When she glanced away, she rolled them, and twirled a fine blonde curl around on her index finger, snapping the gum she'd been chewing the whole time.

Car accidents were tricky things. She'd been wearing her seatbelt, which was her only excuse as to why she wasn't as banged up as the rest of them. They'd been t-boned, really. Being in an SUV had stopped them from being horribly assaulted by the small Ford Focus that had smashed into them, but it had hit them doing at least sixty-five. She'd been in the back on the opposite side, so she kept the cuts from the glass bleeding so the EMTs would be satisfied that they had helped her. Kira, the girl driving, was not so lucky - Seraphine's eyes wandered up as Kira's parents spoke to a doctor, and she frowned a little.

Broken arm, broken ribs, concussion. It could have been worse, and she would admit that. She liked Kira - not genuinely, but she annoyed her less than everyone else did. Kira was still a human, though, and as such, Sera's feelings only extended so far. She stood up abruptly, and looked down at the other girl. "I'm going to go get some water, Trish. Be okay here for a sec?" she asked. Trish nodded tearfully, and Seraphine escaped, breathing a sigh of relief as she escaped towards the water cooler at the opposite end of the hall.

[Victor Batten]

Fortunately, Victor wasn't involved in the car accident situation, though there was the chance he'd get pulled in at any time.  He was one of the people in the hospital that fit the 'jack of all trades' description, and he'd been known to be passing through Emergency and get snagged to help.  He never really preferred it, but despite his sarcastic remarks and complaints, he still passed through Emergency.

He was doing exactly that right then, examining a file that actually didn't pertain to any of his patients at the hospital, but a rather obnoxious one at the guilds.  He still didn't get what was wrong with Bly Devlin, and was making use of hospital equipment to see if maybe the guild equipment had missed something.  It appeared to be a virus, but a virus that could affect shapeshifters wasn't something he'd ever seen before.  Maybe he was cutting close to the Emergency Room with the subconscious hopes that he'd get snagged and get a distraction from his current headache, but he did have an excuse.

His water bottle needed to be filled, and the water in the cooler tasted better than the tap water.

"You know, I think you miss us down here when you're up there playing surgeon," one of the ER doctors remarked, passing by.

"I have no doubt it's you who miss me. Someone has to do your job." 

"You're a funny man, Victor.  Real funny.  Let me guess, you'll be here all week?"

"Aren't I always?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow up, and he wasn't kidding.  There was a reason Victor's social life was essentially non-existent. 

That doctor snorted and kept going, leaving Victor to wait by the water cooler as the young girl who'd beat him there filled her cup.  He was still examining his paperwork, water bottle in one hand and the file in the other, as he stood off to the side.

[Sylvia Talbot]

Seraphine watched the water trickling out of the cooler, putting all of her energy into concentrating on not giving herself away at the moment. She was tired, but fine, she just hated hospitals. The sterile scent made her sensitive nose burn, and the more she tried to block it out, the more it invaded her senses. The problem with hospitals was that everything about them was invasive - sights, smells, sounds. They just came at her, assaulting her when she wanted nothing more than to go home and just go to bed.

The problem was that her senses didn't agree.

  "You're a funny man, Victor."

She froze suddenly, everything else around her blurring out and fading away. She wasn't even at the water cooler anymore; she was somewhere else, another time. She was watching Victor walk out of the front door, watching and powerless to stop him. The object that had once been a beating heart in her chest contracted almost painfully, and she felt something strange on her hands. She looked down and realized that the water she'd been filling had overflowed, and she dropped the cup suddenly, backing away from it in such a hurry that she smacked into the man behind her.

No, she would not have a nuclear meltdown here. She would wait until she was home and away from prying eyes. One hand pressed to her forehead awkwardly, and she held up a hand as she backed away from him. "Sorry, sorry," she muttered, trying to regain her composure. She blinked a few times, forcing him to come into focus, and then she realized what had triggered the small episode.

Victor. It was Victor. But it was always Victor, wasn't it? She swayed a little, mouth opening slightly, like she had something to say but didn't want to say it - her breath caught at her teeth and she just stared at him for a moment, fingers pressing against her chest where that sharp pain was coming from again.

The problem with her psychotic, serial-killer tendencies was that for Seraphine, there was no proper time or place. Ever.

[Victor Batten]

There were two things wrong with this situation.

1. Victor should have been paying more attention.  Seriously, man, what's wrong with you?

2. The girl shouldn't have been backing into him.  What the hell?

Fortunately, he didn't have any water to spill everywhere just yet, so his file was safe except for a sheet or two that escaped during his initial surprise at being backed into.  He took in the water mess she'd made and her apologies rather quickly from there, and he fixed his blue eyes on her with interest.  Was something wrong with her?  That was a strange reaction, though he hadn't been looking at the time to see what she'd reacted to.  For all he knew, it could have been a spider or something.

"It's fine, what are nurses for, if not cleaning up after the rest of us?" he asked, obviously not in need of an answer as he caught a passing nurse with a tap on the shoulder.  She got the hint when he gestured to the water, and he turned his attention back to the girl in front of him.  "Is something wrong?"

He hoped to God that she didn't start crying on him or freaking out.  He wasn't into the 'customer service' portion of being a doctor, though he tried when it was necessary.  Tried.  That didn't mean he succeeded.

[Sylvia Talbot]

Seraphine watched him curiously as he spoke, his voice like a symphony on her ears. It was him, it had to be. Fate had put her in that crash so that she would end up here, and now - she shook her head a little as he tapped a nurse - But what.. - Ah, he was telling her to clean up the mess. A smile flickered to her face and was gone in an instant, because she still couldn't grasp what was happening.

  "Is something wrong?

The sound of his voice seemed to drag on for forever in her mind, and she couldn't put her finger on just what about him made him so similar to Victor, but yes it was something - no, not similar; he was Victor. He was Victor, and he'd come back, and they were a hundred years ago. She moved instantly, wrapping her arms around him, burying her face into his chest. She nearly ducked his paperwork, but she was still graceful, and so she'd curled around it somehow.

She refused to let herself breakdown entirely, but she couldn't help what she was doing. "Oh, gods, I've missed you so much," she breathed, voice edging on tears. "Please, never leave again. I'll do anything you ask, just don't leave again Victor," she begged softly, not loud enough for anyone to hear her (of course) but harshly enough for him to get the point.

[Victor Batten]

He didn't exactly miss her strange looks initially, but he certainly hadn't translated them to mean what they really meant.  He assumed that she was involved with something that traumatized her (which was actually true, but not in the way he expected), and that she was just having trouble coping.

Wow, did he not understand the extent.

He had more of an idea when she suddenly started clinging to him, and the surprise was evident on his face as the nurse looked up at him questioningly.  Considering the way she'd ducked his paperwork and curled around out of its way, his hands were free, but he honestly didn't know what to do with them.  Could he really pry a girl who'd been through something traumatic off of him?

Oh, fuck.  What the hell was she saying? 

Still not quite sure what to do with her, he looked down at her as she whispered to him, and it made absolutely no sense to him.  She missed him?  Never leave?  Oh, and she'd called him by name.  That was brilliant, and he froze for an instant, immediately thinking that he had to be dealing with a vampire.  If she'd just plucked his name like that, then he had to be. 

Wait.  He was going to kick Roberts in the ass.  The dipshit had called him by name in front of the girl, and that was where she'd gotten his name.  He was just too paranoid for his own good, apparently.  Thinking vampire as quickly as all that really wasn't a good reflex to have, though it had occurred to him in the recent past that being paranoid wasn't a bad thing if there were really monsters out there.  That wasn't a thought process to worry about right then, however, and so he had to focus on the girl that was hanging onto him for dear life.

"Ah, that would actually be rather difficult, I'm afraid.  Unless you intended to live here at the hospital?" he drawled, unable to help himself.  See how his bedside manner sucks?  Yeah.  It also happened to be that his default for situations he didn't like was sarcasm and cynicism.  Having a girl clinging to him and hissing things like that was one of those situations that he didn't like.  Who could blame him?  That would have been a thought, though; her living at the hospital.  The only reason it wasn't was because of her clothing, and the lack of a bulletin warning hospital personnel that someone had escaped the psych ward. 

It would be just his luck, though. 

[Sylvia Talbot]

Seraphine laughed, a sparkling sort of sound, and pulled away for a moment, shaking her head at him, blonde curls spilling across her shoulders. Her eyes were watered up, but she hadn't really started crying. She couldn't remember when last she'd cried - Gods, the sensation was so strange and new to her, this thundering sort of sensation in her blood. "Whatever you want," she said effortlessly, pressing her lips together in a sort of smile that bordered on tears yet again.

She didn't seem to be aware of anyone around her at the moment; no nurses, doctors, no human 'friends' who were looking at her in an equally strange fashion yet saying nothing and attempting to go about their business as though perhaps she'd just bumped her head a little too hard. "You can't even believe how long I've been looking for you - everywhere. Europe mostly, because that's where you went so often, but I couldn't ever seem to.. I'd get there, and they'd say you'd just gone. I had almost lost hope, but now that I have you, I swear I'll never hurt you again."

She was silent, waiting. Waiting for her husband to take her back, to tell her he loved her, and all of those things she'd grown to hate that she'd missed so damn much. She wanted nothing more than for him to put his arms around her and tell her that he forgave her, and she was waiting, that lovelorn expression on her face.

Sucks for you!

[Victor Batten]

He obviously didn't move to put his arms around her or tell her any of the things she wanted to hear, but she was the only one who could have expected him to do anything other than stare at her as though he were contemplating a great many things, none of them particularly flattering of her.

Frankly, he thought she was totally batshit.

Europe?  "Ah, tell me, what's my last name?" he requested, not all that pleased with the 'never hurt you again' bit, since that definitely wasn't encouraging.  He didn't know what situation she was trying to drop on him, but he really wasn't interested.  He was intending to use the last name to explain to her that she had the wrong guy, and send her on her way. 

If he could get someone from the psych ward down there to do so, that'd be even better, but he wasn't expecting the nurse who'd cleaned up, listened to what little she could get, and then taken off.  She would likely just spread the gossip that Victor Batten was getting attention from young girls that acted like they knew him a little too well, which would be absolutely amazing for his reputation.

Stabbing someone with a scalpel was sounding damn good right then.

[Sylvia Talbot]

Seraphine shook her head a little. "Damascus. Why would you even ask me that?" she asked, making a face at him. It was Trish who broke up the party, however, before Victor could interject anything further. She placed a hand on Seraphine's shoulder, and tugged at her gently.

  "Sarah, Kira's awake. We need to go see her," she whispered, glancing up at Victor with a look of desperation. She was of the mind that her friend had a concussion and needed to be re-checked.

Seraphine turned to Trish, and her eyes narrowed to little slits, pupils dilating so heavily that the colour was completely blacked out from them - or was it? She walked into her mind, happily, and drove her away without a word. She did little to flex her vampiric power outside of absolute necessity when feeding, but this was a time where humans wouldn't get in her way.

She pushed that bubble outward, blanketing herself so that people just... didn't notice her - or Victor, for that matter. She smiled a little to him, giving him a tug. "Please, let's go? I want to go home, but it's so empty without you. I just can't bear it."

[Victor Batten]

He opened his mouth to object to the last name she'd told him was his, but her friend's interruption ended up doing more harm than good.  Sarah, since that seemed to be her name, sent her friend packing with only a look.  Her friend didn't look too terribly scandalized by the treatment, which was suspicious, and his nephews didn't complain about him not missing a thing for nothing.  The already suspicious situation was looking worse.

"Sarah, is it?  I'm afraid you're mistaken," he told her, glancing up in the hopes of seeing someone who would help get her off of him if she went crazy.  Roberts was on his way back down the hall, which prompted Victor to give him a quick gesture and a look that suggested this wasn't normal. 

Except, Roberts looked right past him.

What the hell?  He looked back to Sarah, eyes narrowing, and took in whatever details he could commit to memory.  He might need them later.  "I'm not the Victor you think I am.  My last name is Batten, not Damascus."

[Sylvia Talbot]

Seraphine pulled away entirely, stepping back like he'd burned her. She pressed her lips together, shaking her head. "Nn - no," she said - no, whimpered. "No, you can't do this to me. I've looked for years, you don't understand. Gods, Victor, I've been losing my mind without you, I can't function. Nothing is worth anything, everything is just gone when you're not with me."

The tone of her voice was desperate and entirely upsetting of its own accord, that was, if anyone would have been able to hear her. It was the sound of her heart being crushed, and with every half-mounted protest she made, she took steps further and further back until she hit the wall. She'd fallen into the role so well, the role of being abandoned - she couldn't breathe. Seraphine forgot that she didn't need air, because air didn't matter right now - he was renouncing her again, and she couldn't handle it.

She slid down to the ground, hyperventilating - which was strange for a vampire to do, but for the love of God, she looked and acted like a human girl was acting, why wouldn't anyone assume otherwise? She covered her face with her hands, shaking as she tried to make sense of it. "What did I do?" she pleaded. "Am I not pretty to you anymore? Do I not please you? What can I do to change? Please, just say it and I will do it, anything!" she cried.

She was yelling at him from the floor, the sound awful enough because of the amount of emotion thrown into it - but for Seraphine, this was all very real. People passed between them, not even a glance down at the pleading girl or the dumbfounded doctor that she was begging for a second look; her friends sat with their parents in the waiting room, orderlies rushed by, and life went on as usual... except for them.

[Victor Batten]

She was definitely unexpected, and that wasn't helping his evaluation of the situation any.  Each time he thought he was certain that she was a human or a vampire, she did something that made him think that he was wrong.  Nobody seemed to notice anything that was happening, which suggested vampire, but she was actually hyperventilating, and vampires didn't need to breathe.  Was she human or vampire?  What the hell was she even talking about?

Obviously, the Victor she'd known had royally messed her up, but was it just the name?  He hadn't taken much notice of her before her freak-out session, so he didn't know if she'd reacted before she'd heard his name.  Could he really share a name and look similar to her Victor?  How unlucky could he possibly be?

From the looks of things, pretty unlucky.  She'd backed herself up into the wall, then dropped to the floor, yelling at him as though she were going to implode if he didn't do something, and he hadn't the slightest clue what to do.  He approached her swiftly, taking her shoulders in his hands and trying to shush her.  Even if nobody in the halls was reacting, he still had the instinct to calm her down.  "Sarah, shhh, stop this!  I'm not the person you think I am!  You haven't done anything, of course you're pretty, but that doesn't make me someone else!"

If she was really human, he was going to need help with her.  If she wasn't, then...well, he didn't know.

[Sylvia Talbot]

She gasped when he grabbed her, trying to calm her down, and she did - for a few seconds, anyways. Enough to listen to him, but her face twisted from utter shock to that strange emotion teenage girls can capture so well: bitter smiles twisted across a mouth threatening to scream, eyes watery and unfocused and yet sharp, cheeks blushing with the effort to suppress more reacting to whatever the situation was. A photo at the moment of her would have been amazing and depressing at the same time.

"It's never enough," she whined - because there was no other word for the tone of her voice. "Decades of retribution, but never enough. Why?" she demanded, voice shrill. She kicked at the ground, trying to back away from him. She was so disgusted with herself, with everything. "I don't fucking understand," she said to the floor, gaze cast downward, counting tile after tile after tile after tile. She sounded so defeated, like she'd just realized that whatever it was was dead and not coming back - but that would have been a hopeful sort of idea, because Seraphine's mind twisted in and out, trying to make him fit, make him into what it was she wanted.

She looked back up at him, and it was as though the temporal warp around them that she had created suddenly ripped open, a vacuum of commotion surrounding them. People still didn't notice as much, but they were coming into view. Seraphine narrowed her eyes at him, in some sort of confused stare. "Why can't any of you just pretend?" she asked.

Before Victor had a chance to answer, Trish was kneeling down by Seraphine, tugging her to her feet. "Mom's here to get us. Come on, what is with you? Did they check you for a concussion?" she asked as Seraphine sluggishly stood up, brushing herself off from the floor. She yanked her arm back, folding her arms tightly. The air almost crackled around her as she withdrew from them, gaze fixed on the good doctor.

"I'm fine," she snapped. She shouldered passed the girl so hard that she almost knocked Trish over, instead sending her directly at Victor. Trish was stunned, straightening out and wincing as she tended to her arm. She glanced back at Victor, brows raised.

  "What did I miss?" she asked, dumbfounded. She turned back as Seraphine/Sarah stalked towards the hospital door, pushing through a drove of people entering and vanishing out into the courtyard.

[Daphne Holliday]

  Daphne had witnessed the scene from far enough away that the mind control hadn't completely blurred her over. That, of course, and her super psychosis ran so deep that the Jedi mind trick only half-worked, giving Daphne a momentary displacement of time as she stood with her pen poised on the medical chart in her hand. She paused, and looked up enough to see the situation clearing itself. With a pensive frown, she approached Victor carefully. She'd seen how the man moved; he wasn't an every day man, and she knew it.

  Gently, she placed a hand on his shoulder. "Doctor Batten...?" she asked, dark teal-coloured eyes narrowed slightly in confusion.

  She quickly removed her hand when he glanced at it; Daphne had a secure place as being the caring, yet very professional, 'understudy', as it were. She'd learned the value of physical contact, and she knew when and how to use it - she also knew when not to overdo it. Her voice, when she spoke, was quite soft, as though she didn't want to bring any attention to anything; as though she figured out somehow that she wasn't supposed to have noticed the displaced time.

  "I won't ask why my watch just jumped ahead several instances. I will ask if everything is okay," she said. She offered no squeeze, no reassuring smile - Victor was a bit too seasoned for such things. He respected firm, concise, and to the point. Daphne had molded every aspect of her personality to everyone there, creating a seamless blend of... perfect. She awaited his answer.

[Victor Batten]

'Dumbfounded' was a damn good word for Victor right then, and that was saying something.  He wasn't the 'dumbfounded' type, and he didn't wear it well.  He liked knowing what was happening around him, and being in the dark about anything was guaranteed to sour his mood.  He could make his assumptions about this one, but that certainly didn't fill in the holes.  She'd completely gone from seeming as though she didn't know where she was and that he wasn't someone she'd previously known to apparently understanding that he wasn't and being angry that he hadn't played pretend.  He personally found both situations to be unacceptable, but at least she'd gotten up and gone off on her own.  That her friend interrupted once more meant to him that whatever was happening had finished.

He was going to be watching for a repeat performance from her in the future.  In his life, there had never been coincidences.

Fortunately, he hadn't forgotten where he was the way that Sarah had, or Daphne's approach might have startled him into reacting more like a hunter than a surgeon, despite the care she'd taken not to approach him in a way that was threatening.  He didn't know that she'd noticed that he wasn't the typical doctor, but he didn't need to go and confirm anything for her.  Thus, he didn't flinch or do anything other than watch Sarah's departure and then glance at Daphne for a moment before snatching up the paperwork he'd lost from his file and finally facing her more fully. 

She had a funny way of saying that she'd noticed something weird was going on, and it actually got him to flick his cold blue eyes over her with a little more attention devoted, simply for the fact that she'd put the two situations together and understood that he also knew what was going on.  At least, to a point.

"You can ask what you wish, whether I choose to answer or not," he told her crisply.  He'd always been a believer in the power of knowledge, so he didn't deny it when it was requested.  That didn't mean she'd get the full truth and everything about him, but he didn't hold back.  That was why he was so closely watched by other family members around those who didn't know about the rest of the world around them.  He didn't think it was right to hold that from them.  "To answer your question, I don't honestly know.  With my luck, she'll be staking my place out by the time we finish talking," he drawled, rolling his eyes and glancing back the way she'd gone. 

Was he kidding?  Yes, mostly.  He wouldn't have been surprised, though.