multiversallogs | A stranger I've just met, a woman who I hardly know at all and should forget [CLOSED]

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A stranger I've just met, a woman who I hardly know at all and should forget [CLOSED]

Who: Mina and Castiel
What: Either a date or an exercise in poor decision-making
Where: A pub
When: The end of monster week (back-dated)
Notes: None
Warnings: None yet

Mina made it a point to arrive at the pub earlier, after doing a cursory job of tidying up a bit. She had managed to wash most of the blood off of her, but she was hardly as put-together as she usually liked. The sleeves of her purple button-down were rolled up, her collar unbuttoned, her tie untied. Normally, she liked to be meticulous with her appearance (perhaps due to so many years of having to hide certain parts of her body) but the onslaught outside had set Mina's priorities, if nothing else. Quite frankly, she hated the idea of leaving her first aid station, but she had to feed and meeting with Castiel gave her a reasonable alibi. Fortunately, she had found a few volunteers to mind the shop.

After quickly scanning the room, and making sure that she had arrived first, Mina sidled up to the bar, ordering herself a drink. She took whatever it was that passed for blood around here, having it mixed with copious amounts of alcohol to mask the smell and the texture. She'd call it a 'Bloody Mary' or something. Extra virgin. Although that would apparently offend the Hellsing people.

Taking a sip, she sat down, resting her elbows on the bar, watching the door. What new surprises lay in store tonight, she wondered. Castiel clearly had some kind of agenda. No man ever called her beautiful without having some kind of agenda. Furthermore, she wondered what he was. If he came from 2014, or whatever, and remembered the 20's, he was something other than Human. But what? He hadn't recognized her subtle hint about the Mekhet, so clearly not a Kindred.

If nothing else, it would be interesting...

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"The apocalypse happened and my brothers all left the planet, being cut from heaven makes the juice kind of.." Cas whistled and dipped his hand. "I'm not human, but mortality is a word that could define me now."

Mina frowned thoughtfully. Many Kindred she knew were very eager to regain their mortality. Mina was not one of them. She enjoyed being what she was, she had asked for it. There was a profound pleasure in being able to walk away from a hanging or an explosion, not to mention the fact that she enjoyed watching the world change, changing with it. She could not imagine what it would feel like to suddenly revert back to what she was. "That must be awful for you," she murmured, taking a sip of her drink.

She then spit the drink out.

"Apocalypse?" Joseph Brown had warned them, hadn't he? That the world would be consumed in 2011. She remembered the story clearly from when she had been in Morgenstern's mind. California was an island, ruled over by the Ordo Dracul and maintained by mutated creatures with Bat wings. She had been so certain that future had been avoided, based on what the other people had been telling her.

Maybe not...

Cas didn't acknowledge the first part, knowing that it was true and not wanting to admit weakness. He just shifted in his seat and took another swig.

"The Croatoan virus went viral... leaving several infected and more dead in its wake. Lucifer walks the earth. The whole shebang."

"Not the sort of apocalypse I would have expected," Mina said, taking out a handkerchief and neatly sopping up the mess of her drink. "Pardon my mess," she added politely.

This was quite a lot to take in. So, for that matter, was his cavalier attitude. It was all too familiar. Not surprising, she supposed, for someone of his age. He out-dated Kindred society itself. That is, assuming that he wasn't a complete nutter.

It was possible.

"How did you survive?" she asked.

"I was born a soldier, I'm not stupid," but he paused after that tongue against his teeth and just sighed. "And in the end, shortly before arriving here, I think I was near death."

A soldier. Damn it, she really did like him. "I'd offer to examine you, but somehow, I have a feeling your physiology is beyond anything that I've ever encountered before." And if he were dying, she very much doubted that anything in her bag of tricks could help him. Would vampire vitae work on an angel? It sounded more like a philosophical question than a medical question to her.

Mina picked up her drink, swirling the remaining liquid, then downing it all in one shot. She gestured over to the bar tender who, fortunately, did not ask what she wanted, but instead, went about mixing her another drink. She jerked her head toward Castiel's glass too and he nodded.

It was now time for the scientist in Mina to kick in. "So," she said slowly, "if you're not quite human, but you're not an angel anymore, then what is it that sets you apart from the rest of us?"

"Age, I suppose," he answered dryly. "Intuition, seniority, wisdom, recollection, capabilities of both the mind and body."

Cas shrugs. His pride wasn't of import.

Mina smirked slightly. "Capabilities? Now that sounds interesting." She supposed such a statement probably sounded lurid to those who weren't of the blood, but that hardly mattered. Her curiosity had always been a bit of a problem. It had brought her this far, hadn't it? No sense in hiding it now, or pretending to be anything other than what she was.

Which was a little ironic, in light of the Masquerade. But as she was learning now, the rules were different in Baedal. She would have to forge her own path.

"What sort of capabilities?" she asked.

"The perceptive kind, mostly," Cas said stretching out his arms over the wood surface of the table. He took his glass and later drained it after he was done. "I can tell things at first glance most wouldn't be able to, quirks, intuition, wisdom...... what I mentioned before."

Rapidly, Mina played out a cost-benefit analysis in her mind. She decided, given the circumstances, that it was worth the risk, so she leaned forward, holding out her hand, palm up, as though she were visiting a fortune teller. "All right," she said, rippling her fingers slightly. "Then tell something about me. What do you perceive?"

Maybe, she mused, he had some form of auspex. It was possible, and frankly, a bit silly to believe that the Kindred had some kind of monopoly on the ability.

Cas just smiled, smoothing his hand out over hers before placing it back in her direction. "I don't give out freebies," he met her eyes. "And sometimes mysteriousness is the corner stone of a relationship. Wouldn't you think?"

Normally, Mina would immediately have responded with some witty banter to the same tune. But she had changed quite a bit lately. It was all Dr. Brown's fault, she supposed. His existence had made her doubt everything; herself, the nature of her calling to the Valkyrien Amazons, and of course, her disaster of a marriage. But there was no room for Tom at the bar. So once again, she pushed him out of her thoughts.

"I suppose that depends," she replied, "on the nature of any particular relationship."

"We're just two strangers sharing drinks," Cas mentioned in a feather light tone as he gestured to the barkeep for a refill. He didn't want to involve himself too deeply into anything, as far as he knew this was just a delusion brought on by the plague or one of Lucifer's tricks. He'd stay a skeptic until something truly legitimate happened.

Unexpected. But probably for the best.

Mina drummed her fingers on the counter a moment, the light gleaming off of her four rings. "So what sort of work does a former angel do in a place like Baedal? It seems to me that after surviving an apocalypse, working as a stockboy in a shop would seem frightfully dull." She paused. "Or maybe a pleasant relief, I'm not entirely sure."

It was certainly a relief being able to practice medicine normally, rather than spending every night engrossed in Cruac and the destruction of churches. "Where are you working?"

"I'm not working anywhere, yet," he remarked dryly. He wasn't ready to get a leg up even if he wanted to. "I'm living with the Winchesters currently, anything else is left to the wind... I haven't really discovered my purpose here yet."

"I'm afraid I don't know the Winchesters," Mina said, running her tie through her fingers. "Are they people you knew from home?"

She was hesitant to talk about her former life too much, but she supposed tit for tat was fair. "There are two people who came here from my...life, with me. Anna Demirovna and Jones. No first name. She just goes by Jones." She rolled her eyes. Very cliche, in Kindred circles, going by a single name. Then again, she supposed wryly, Jones wasn't exactly a Kindred. "I've never been drawn to normal people, apparently."

"Yes, they were my charge, the both of them before things went from bad to worse," Cas swept his fingers away from hers and over toward himself on the table. "Me either."

Mina crossed one leg over the other. The entire meeting was starting to feel more like business than anything else. Perhaps it was the bar. It reminded her of Doyle's speakeasy Elysium. Nothing good ever seemed to happen there. That was an eerie thought.

Lightly, she rescued her chin on her fingertips. "Well, tell me about your friends, then. What are they like?" Apparently not angels. Not if they were 'his charge,' whatever that meant.

Cas stretched out his back in the chair for a moment, disregarding conversation. "Hunters... one is surly and the other is an intellectual."

"Hunters?" Well, that sounded potentially hazardous to her health. "I'm guessing, if they have an angel looking out for them, that they're not out on the African savannah hunting big game."

She ran her finger around the rim of her glass, watching Castiel. And now for the big question. "What do they hunt?"

"The supernatural, mostly, things that prey on humans routinely," Castiel drained his glass again and made a satisfied sound. "Which isn't lions and things of that nature."

Damn it.

Mina couldn't help but sigh a little bit. After the recent goings on in Chicago, she was getting used to being knocked down a peg or two on the food chain, but things were bordering on the absurd now, here in Baedal. It seemed like everyone she met was either supernatural (and capable of hurting her) or hunting after the supernatural. And not at all the way she used to hunt after certain supernatural things.

No rest for the wicked, she supposed.

"In my time," she murmured, "the only people who were so obsessed with the supernatural were the very rich and eccentric or the penniless and superstitious. I'm having a hard time adjusting to all of this supernatural...display."

"You should see the heads turn when I tell them of my roots," he responded in slight trying to cheer her up or divert the conversation from something so depressing. "Co-existence, the balance, it's present in all things."

"Now that is something Anne would say," she said, perking up a little bit.

She supposed Anne was a safe subject. Mina didn't have to mention the vampire parts of the story. "Anne was my mentor. A remarkable woman. After my husband died, she took me under her wing." There was a particular smile Mina always reserved for talking about Anne. It was surprisingly genuine, distant, pleasant. Quite unlike her typical, hardened demeanor. "She used to tell me that balance was the purpose of all living things. For every evil created, the forces governing our lives created a force of good."

And so it was with the Kindred. For every Centurion, there were ten Valkyrien Amazons. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to do nearly as much good as they hoped.

Cas drummed his fingers against the wood surface of the table between them, glass now empty and his stomach already full.

"I don't have much else to believe in but that, even if the balance was not... reassembled where I'm from." The corners of his mouth quirked up a touch. "Perhaps it's just... foolish hope that this place could offer something so lost to the wind in my own realm."

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