wonder if you'll see through my disguise

[indiscreet]

Who: Anna and Mina
What: a heart-to-heart, bonding despite themselves, so much estrogen
Where: their room in the basement of the Valhalla Inn
When: Givdi, before dawn
Warnings: none

They saw each other so rarely, it seemed, which should have been difficult to manage, sharing the same room. But with all her work at Hellsing, Anna found herself spending the vast majority of her time around Sobek Croix.

And, she was willing to admit, she thought she liked it that way. Mina and Anna had never gotten along; it had taken the mutual confusion of Baedal to bring them to something like an alliance. But she hadn't forgotten their first conversation here, either, when Mina let her out of that terrible small room. Now, when she thinks of Doctor Barrett as a heretic, or mocks her for dressing like a man, it's more old habit than anything -- something she clings to, because it feels normal.

Well, it has been long enough, and maybe it's time to drop the act. This city is proving to be as potentially deadly as Chicago, with none of the Kindred order, and no Masquerade to protect them. Strange to think, but perhaps they need one another. It's why Anna waits in their room, as the night comes to an end. Mina will arrive sooner or later -- she has to.

Comments

[primogen_vampirate]

These days, Mina rarely left the Inn, unless she was working a shift at the hospital. She wasn't even going shopping any more, although there were still dozens of shopping bags all around the room, most of them untouched. Everywhere she went, Mina just felt overwhelmed with depression, so she no longer wanted to go anywhere. Ventrue were, of course, prone to derangement, far more than the other clans, but that wasn't what she was feeling. Mina hadn't uttered the word aloud, but she knew it: Loneliness.

Tonight was one of those rare exceptions when she bothered to go someplace other than the hospital. The docks. For many hours, she just stood there, watching the water, listening to it splash against the wooden wharf. She let the smell absorb into her clothing, a simple, white shift (oh yes, Mina had taken to wearing dresses much in the style of those from her married life). And somehow, she lost track of the time.

It was near sunrise when she finally returned to the room, taking her hat off and hanging it on a peg in the wall. She nodded vaguely to Anna, crossing over to her couch where her CiD sat on the arm, untouched for weeks. There, she lay down, folding her hands on her chest, closing her eyes.

[indiscreet]

How had she gone so long without realizing this -- how... shrunken into herself Mina had become? Anna might not have liked the Primogen (and she might have particularly not liked the fact that she was a Primogen), but at least the Mina Barrett she first met had been all a whirlwind of color, of expansive energy.

Seeing her in the plain white dress is disturbing.

"Mina-- " Her voice comes out softer than she had intended: instinctively placating. "Don't go to bed yet." Quickly, she crosses to the couch, before Mina can slip away into that death-sleep that came with the dawn.

[primogen_vampirate]

Mina opened her eyes, masking her disappointment with practiced precision. She didn't like talking to Anna much. It wasn't because of their politics or religion. The Lance would always be the Lance. Mina had come to terms with that decades before Anna was even born. What bothered her was the whole Fae mess. Mina just didn't know how to deal with it. She had been so intent on just ignoring the Fae in Chicago. Now she was sharing a room with one and she'd be lying if she didn't say some nights she wanted to sleep with one eye open.

"Something wrong?" she asked, sitting up wearily. "I thought you'd be out seducing some hapless new arrival."

She plastered a precise, blithe smile on her face. It was a blatant lie, but it helped her to get back into the swing of things. That's how her relationship with Anna worked. Jibe and quips and nothing serious. Well, except for that one conversation, the day Anna arrived. But Mina thought it just a fluke.

[indiscreet]

"Seduction? With this whole 'anti-cruorvore' madness? I know you don't think much of me, but I'm not that stupid." She frowns when she talks about it. Anna can't get over the indignity of it all, and she doesn't know which idiot thought it was a good idea to do away with the Masquerade in the first place here, but she hopes he's happy with himself. She'd be starving by now, if it weren't for Hellsing...

Oh.

"How about you? I know we can't all manage to attract kine on our own merits, but surely you must have your...substitute methods." The smirk is on her lips again: relief at the return of the pattern. So long as Mina actually has an answer, at least.

[primogen_vampirate]

The truth was that Mina hadn't been feeding well. Jacqueline had forced her to feed from her veins a few times, but Mina had felt so guilty afterwards that she was pretty sure she had, literally, cried a good amount of that blood away in the shower. She conserved what blood she had by refraining from Cruac and from doing any with any of that blush of health nonsense, but every night, waking up was becoming harder and harder. Deep down in some private part of her mind, she was actually considering torpor. But that would require meticulous arrangements in an ever-shifting world, where she really had no one to rely on at present.

She missed Grace.

She missed Anne.

Hell, she even missed Tristan.

"The night I can't manage, Anya, believe me when I say that, for better or for worse, you'll be the first to know." She didn't mean it as a threat, even though it was a threat that lingered over anyone who was near Mina. Physically speaking, of course.

Absently, she twisted her wedding ring, pulling the chain tight against her throat. "I wonder how Brown managed it," she muttered. "There were versions of him that barely required any blood at all. Dragon secrets, I suppose."

[indiscreet]

You think I couldn't win, if it came down to it, if you were mad with hunger? Not a threat -- an inevitability, if things kept up like this. It would be her arrows and Mina's guns, and maybe the strength of the lightning would be enough to counter the strength of Frenzy, though she hasn't tried them since Sir Martel bound her. It would cost her, though, and cost her dearly, if Mina lost control. She imagines staggering out of the Inn, weak with blood loss, something in her mind snapping...

Horrible thoughts.

"Who cares about Doctor Brown, now? He's not here. We are. And if you're not feeding, Primogen, it matters." Her fingers grip the arm of the couch. The nails would be digging into her palms, if the cushion weren't in the way.

[primogen_vampirate]

Mina laughed at that. Who cared about Doctor Brown? For the rest of her life, however long that lasted, Mina would be forced to care about him. And that gnawed at her, worse than hunger pains. She twisted her ring a bit tighter. If she were mortal, she would have had some breathing problems at this point. The silver of her chain cut into her skin and she realized her grip was so tight that her hand was shaking. Slowly, she uncurled her fingers, letting go.

Physically, anyway. Mina wasn't good at letting go in the metaphorical sense. Which was why she was here now.

"You can drop the 'Primogen' nonsense," she said lightly. "Or haven't you heard? I'm retired. Obsolete." And suddenly, she desperately wanted one of her rum and artificial blood cocktails. "But we've gone off track. What is it that you wanted to talk about, dear?"

[indiscreet]

"Obsolete like the name Anya is obsolete?" There was no one left to call her that any more: not her parents, or Pyotr -- she'd seen to that herself, as if she needed another reason to be Damned. And not Leander. Perversely, she finds herself wishing she'd managed to hold on to the bell. Maybe someday she could learn to make another.

She gives a slight shake of her head, clearing her thoughts. "Nothing in particular. But...everything. I don't have the first idea what you've been up to here, but it's been months, for both of us. Things have changed. We need to get out of the Valhalla."

[primogen_vampirate]

She couldn't help but quirk an eyebrow slightly. Was Anna looking to bond with her? Did she need companionship? She who claimed she could have any company she desired, even without the use of disciplines. It was almost funny, except Mina wasn't amused by much of anything these days. If there were ever a casuality to the transition into this new world, it was decidedly Mina's sense of humor.

Leaning back against the arm of the couch, Mina bridged her fingers, a typical gesture for her, an old pirate's trick she had learned. It gave one the appearance of feeling in control of a situation, and it skillfully allowed one to show off one's rings. And Mina was still wearing hers, even if the rest of her wardrobe had changed. "Get out of the Valhalla?" she repeated carefully. It was true. She hated living in the Inn, constantly at the mercy of the other guests, unguarded from the daylight. But there was one problem and she easily put words to it. "And go where?"

oh hey look another tag

[indiscreet]

She shrugs.

"There is no shortage of real estate in Baedal, Mina, and between the two of us I'm sure we've saved enough money to afford something, whether it's a house or -- if you'd rather we did this separately, though I confess I've become accustomed to you -- we could simply seek out basements to call our very own." She realizes she's rambling a bit, but her default mode with Mina was all snark and meaningless quips, and now that she actually wanted to achieve something with a conversation she wasn't sure where to start.

"We can look, together. That's all I'm proposing. Jones and Brie have moved out. What are we so afraid of, that we can't do the same?" The question is intended as rhetorical, but there's a bit of genuine worry slipping into her tone.

[primogen_vampirate]

Mina looked at Anna over the tips of her fingers. It went without saying that Jones and Jacqueline had certain advantages over the two of them. And to be quite honest, Mina found herself wondering what sunlight did to a Fae-infested Kindred. But she didn't dare ask. "I've spoken to Jones about the possibility of constructing something," she said quietly, with little enthusiasm. "It would take longer and cost a lot, but in the end, it would be safer. It would mean a certain sense of security, of control, that would be difficult to obtain from a pre-existing structure."

When she'd first moved to Chicago, Mina had taken the same measures. Of course, she'd had more money there. And access to a morgue until her haven beneath her office floor was completed, the builders wiped of their memories of the work.

"Unfortunately," she sighed, "doing lab work doesn't pay nearly as well as being a trauma surgeon. I can't afford to buy the raw materials yet, let alone pay Jones for her trouble."