Can You Imagine Us, Years From Today

[deservesadaisy]

Who: Ivan and Mitchell

What: Getting up to speed

Where: A cafe, probably in Mafaton

When: Backdated to a few hours after Mitchell's arrival

Notes: This may or may not go well.

Warnings: None so far, except for neither of them being at all a good person.


Ivan spent the hours that Mitchell was using to settle himself mainly in continuing his ongoing search for a new apartment. He'd set himself up in a temporary space, but since travel wasn't an option, he wanted some place comfortable to settle. (And some place that he could pay Njoki to ward properly.)

He wasn't precisely displeased to see Mitchell in Baedal, though it was strange, having someone from home arrive. In fact, however, Ivan was more disappointed than anything. Saving Mitchell had been impulsive, and he'd no guarantee he could have survived if he hadn't, but he'd still hoped Mitchell would have carried on with his second chance a bit longer than he had.

Perhaps the story would at least be entertaining. One could always hope.

Comments

[martyrdomoption.livejournal.com]

He nods in reply to the query about Annie. As for Daisy, "I don't. I stopped killing and she wanted to keep going. I never heard from her after we moved to Wales." He's maybe a little too casual the way he adds a sugar to his coffee and stirs. Something to focus on rather than give himself away.

Although what he said was the truth to the best of his knowledge. McNair told only Herrick about a vampire named Daisy and, as far as Mitchell knows, only Cara resurrected Herrick.

[deservesadaisy]

Ivan nods. Truth be told, he's not overly optimistic about Daisy's survival on her own. She was too prone to piss off the wrong people, and suddenly Ivan wouldn't be a deterrent for those people striking back. But maybe he was underestimating her. (...unlikely.)

He was quiet, then, for a bit. "So you went clean again, after you moved. And found a way in and out of the afterlife, that's clever of you."

[martyrdomoption.livejournal.com]

"It didn't go as smoothly as I hoped." As Ivan can no doubt imagine with these sorts of things. Neither did Mitchell, at the time, but it didn't stop him. He can be extremely obstinate about getting what he wants, although the consequences are rarely thought out. "There were people waiting for me on the other side. The people I killed. I got Annie back but one of them told me I was going to die soon. Killed by a werewolf."

There's a tight little smile as he remembers his interaction with Lia and her prophesy. "A wolf-shaped bullet."

[deservesadaisy]

"Someone has a flair for melodrama," Ivan says with a snort. "A wolf-shaped bullet indeed."

[martyrdomoption.livejournal.com]

"Mm." Which is in agreement, albeit he knows he deserved what he got. "Then the Old Ones requested me to join them after everything to do with the massacre. I didn't. Oh, and someone found a way to ressurect Herrick. Yeah."

"And seeing as I'd recently been given a death sentence, I went about trying to find out how to come back to life. It didn't work. In the meantime, I was trying to stop being found out about the massacre, which didn't go well. First I was almost arrested, then someone covered it up. And I realised that whoever had done it would want a pretty big favour and I just...couldn't. Wyndham turned up at the end. So. I asked George to kill me. And he did."

There's a lot more to it, obviously. Parts of which he left out intentionally, parts which he might elaborate upon later. And behind it all, despite trying to keep things calm, his nerves still feel very, very fraught, which doesn't help.

[deservesadaisy]

"...someone resurrected Herrick," he repeats, slowly. "What did Herrick think of you letting your pet wolf rip him apart?" Ivan intends to unpack this a little at a time; he's fairly certain Mitchell isn't just completely mad, but it's a lot to sort through.

[martyrdomoption.livejournal.com]

"He couldn't remember anything at first. He didn't even know he was a vampire." Mitchell looks at Ivan, with a tired expression of 'can you believe that?' "We kept him in the house, upstairs. After the police came to arrest me, all those humans around, he must have snapped. He killed the lot of them, then he impersonated an officer and came to let me out."

"He stabbed George's girlfriend, Nina. Then he put me and George in a cage, taunted him with it, tried to turn us against each other. A werewolf friend of George's came and I tricked us into getting out." He stares at the table as he speaks, remembering everything that had gone by in the last twenty-four hours all too clearly.

[deservesadaisy]

"Mate, it sounds like you need a drink stronger than coffee," he says, after considering all of that. "I can't imagine he was thrilled with the prospect of Wyndham taking you away, though, if he knew."

Mitchell and Herrick had been like an abusive married couple ever since Mitchell was recruited, in Ivan's opinion. And in that vein, Herrick hadn't cared for anyone else getting their hands on Mitchell in any substantial way.

[martyrdomoption.livejournal.com]

"A nice young woman let me out of the room and gave me whiskey. I'm not sure it was enough." The same young woman who has been speculating over Ivan's sex life with Ilde, which is surely a more fascinating kind of six-degrees in Baedel.

"I killed him." And then he realises he may have to be a bit more specific. "Herrick, I mean. I killed him."

[deservesadaisy]

Ivan nods, then. It had always seemed that one of them would kill the other, really, until a werewolf did it instead. It was, he supposes, sort of funny that the same werewolf ended up killing both of them.

He wonders if it would have been kinder to let Mitchell die with the rest of them in Bristol. He would have never had to know that the woman he'd loved betrayed him, for a start.

Ivan sips his coffee.

"Wyndham's not going to make it pleasant for your wolf, you know."

[martyrdomoption.livejournal.com]

"I know." He thinks about George, Nina, the baby that's on the way. Annie. All of them stronger than they look and still very vulnerable.

"I still think they're better off without me. It's not--" he can feel his voice catching a little, and he steadies himself. "It's not that I don't want to be a good person. I tried, I really did. But I ended up just about ruining their lives anyway."

[deservesadaisy]

Ivan's smile is small and hard to read. "Well. It sounds like their lives are out of your hands now, regardless."

[martyrdomoption.livejournal.com]

There's a bit of a pause before he asks, "What's it like here?" He could do with a change of topic and he knows talking about back home is only going to lead to (more) self-pity and volatile emotions.

[deservesadaisy]

Ivan lets him leave it for the time being. He's got enough to get a sense of Mitchell's frame of mind, and Mitchell wouldn't have news of anyone else Ivan particularly cared about.

"Strange," he says instead, in answer. "Vampires are out, here. Crurovores, you'll hear sometimes, to include those who consume flesh as well as blood. But they're not all quite like we're used to."

[martyrdomoption.livejournal.com]

"I've been told a few details." When talking with Ilde, he had asked if it was like in horror movies, only to have the irony of his statement pointed out to him. "Any bigger differences I should know?"

[deservesadaisy]

"Well, before you go trying to convert everyone, some of them die if they stop drinking blood," he says, a bit dry. "On the other hand, bagged and artificial works for some of them, too. Up until recently, as long as you didn't take from anyone unwilling and didn't snub your nose at the city's higher powers, you were generally left alone."

[martyrdomoption.livejournal.com]

"That's... Huh." He doesn't know what to say to that. Convenient? Incredibly simple? Instead he moves the subject on. "What happened recently?"

[deservesadaisy]

"There's a political group, decided to run a campaign against our kind. Got a lot of the legit places closed down, turned public attention against us." He considers his coffee. "Those that could went into a sort of hibernation. The rest of us were left to manage. The city was handing out bagged since there was a shortage, and it got laced with something."

[martyrdomoption.livejournal.com]

"I can't say it surprises me." The part about the political party, at least. In spite of his decision to try harder and go clean again, he's more than aware that there will always be humans who oppose even peaceful vampires.

"'Laced,' though. I didn't know there was a drug that could affect blood for us like that." Excuse him while he still thinks in terms from their world. Then again, it does conjure up an image of vampire roofies.

[deservesadaisy]

"I'm not sure what it was, if it was a drug the way you're thinking or something else." Ivan swirls his coffee. "It hit different people differently. For me..."

He smiles, somewhat distant, and for anyone who knows Ivan as much as Mitchell, more than somewhat dangerous. "You know that part of you that reminds you why it's a good idea to follow rules? That part was more or less switched off."

Though he doesn't say as much, Mitchell can guess it was a bloody evening. And he can also guess how dire the situation had gotten, if someone like Ivan deigned to touch bagged blood.

[martyrdomoption.livejournal.com]

Mitchell can fully understand the implications. "God, that's... No one's trying to punish the vampires, are they? Is anything being done to the people that pulled this?"

[deservesadaisy]

"A lot of us got put down that night," he says, grimly. "But since? There's been bad feeling, but no systematic attempts to blame us. Nor much done in the way of tracking down those responsible."

He pulls out a cigarette. "I've been quietly looking into it."

[martyrdomoption.livejournal.com]

"Understandable," he says, with a little nod, and not really knowing much else to say for the time being.

[deservesadaisy]

"There are still willing donors," he says, after a moment. "Not so many as there were, but some. Assuming you trust yourself not to drain them dry."

[martyrdomoption.livejournal.com]

That is the ten million dollar question: does he? Mitchell avoids it entirely, replying with, "I'll figure something out."

What Baedel's open society means hasn't fully hit him yet. And then there are all those interesting moral quandries to wrestle with first.