sixthiterationlogs | [MINGLE] Breakfast Feast

[MINGLE] Breakfast Feast

WHERE: Lawn in front of 6I Inn
WHEN: Morning, April 5
OPEN TO: ALL - Mingle
WARNINGS: n/a

The day dawns bright and just a little cool, soft mist rolling over the distant mountains as the forest stretches and yawns in the breeze. It's another beautiful morning in this new-old village, just waiting for its inhabitants to begin filling it with the work of the day.

But this day, there is a surprise. A gift, if you will, not unfamiliar to the old timers, although they know too that sometimes these gifts come with strings.

On the lawn in front of the 6I inn, all of the tables, chairs and even the bar has been moved out into the breaking sunshine. A breakfast feast has been arranged, tables piled high with every imaginable delicacy and comfort food of a certain era: Muffins, toast, coffee, fruit, pop-overs, crumpets, lamb chops, porridge, hot chocolate, biscuits, and every kind of egg, just to start. Even the bar is stocked for those itching for mimosas, mint juleps or irish coffee.

Of course, anyone who has spent time in the wilderness can tell you: In a place gone wild, it's only a matter of time before the scent of food draws in unwanted visitors. Eat up while you can, villagers; you may be sharing your plate soon.

[Please read details here!]

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At first, he thinks he's seeing things again: it's the kind of gross inversion of the world he's used to out the corner of his eye. The bullshit his brain does to everyday sights and smells when he's worn down, and being uprooted as badly as they have left him pretty worn.

God, but it smells real.

Jude can't let that back him off, though--if nothing else, Sam probably is throwing up behind the inn. "Shit," he exhales, just to make his presence known before he's right up at her side. He hovers a hand at her shoulder, not quite taking a grip. "You alright? Can I get you anything?"

It still looks and smells like blood, after a few steady blinks and attempt to focus past it, but sometimes the fits can be persistent.

It was tempting to reply to 'You alright?' with a biting remark. Sam was far from all right. She was fucking dead. But, really, she was too exhausted to snark. And Jude, weird though she thought he was, had always been halfway decent to her. It wasn't his fault she was falling apart at the seams.

She planted her hands on the ground, on the outsides of her knees, and spit a little blood into the grass.

All this over a piece of toast?

Life really wasn't fair.

"Sorry," she mumbled. What else could she really say here? "I wasn't planning on this."

When he finally took the chance and placed his palm flat to the back of her shoulder, fingers curling in the slightest grip, it was for both of them. The smell really was quite strong, quite present. He had to wonder where it came from, where he'd picked it up. Sure, puddles of blood were all over movies and comics, but how did he know this smell?

He shook his head a little, still trying to clear it. "I think it's a whole other issue when you plan your puking," he points out. "What did you eat, and can you handle a little water?"

She was familiar with that whole other issue. She'd gone to high school with it.

To think that those had been the simpler times...

Sam shook her head a little bit, sitting back on her heels. Other Kindred got all cranky and puffed up like cats with uninvited physical contact. But Sam kind of loved it. Kind of needed it. It had a grounding effect, that reminded her that she was still existing in reality, even if she couldn't feel her heart beating any more.

Or again. Or something.

"No water," she muttered. "It was a piece of toast." So simple. So...fucking pure. Sam squeezed her eyes shut against the threat of tears. She wasn't a crier, damn it. But all she'd wanted was a slice of bread, for fuck's sake.

Ah, shit. He didn't think it was his hand making her curl a bit like that, so he tightened the grip a bit, knowing he couldn't leave her like this. He'd probably cry too, if something was that deeply wrong--toast is what you ate when you were already puking up everything else. It sounded less like bad food and more like she was already sick.

Or, so stressed from being hurtled from one village the next that she couldn't eat.

Crouching down puts him closer to the smell, but it wasn't going to get any better until they walked away. Maybe even then; some smells lingered, followed him around. He'd just have to wait for it to stop, and hope he didn't start puking too. For now, he got down next to her, hand still on her shoulder.

"I heard they got some new supplies at the hospital. Maybe we should go, let them check you out."

"Shit no!"

She said it so fast, so abruptly. It was an old instinct kicking in again. The first rule of fight club was that you didn't talk about fight club. Vampires weren't real. They were illusions of pop culture and over-active imaginations. That had to be the rule. It it wasn't the rule, she was as good as dead.

Or so Karen used to claim.

Her eyes widened though, filmy traces of blood appearing in the spaces between her eyelashes. Attempting to recover, she cleared her throat, sinking down a little bit. "I'll be fine," she muttered.

Way to be convincing, Sam.

Jesus--it was all really catching up to him today. The second trip through the fountain must have knocked something loose, if the world is melting red at the edges. He's lived with it long enough, he doesn't recoil from her eyes: he just feels tired. He can't even do something this simple, this necessary, without what he sees folding in on itself.

Sometimes a crying, puking girl is just that, and he wished his senses would agree.

Taking the space of a breath and a steady nod to tell himself it's not real, Jude squeezed her shoulder under his hand. "Alright, no one's gonna make you go." Jude least of all, even if he did his best to keep his own troubles invisible and shrugged off.

Medical attention vetoed, all he can do is dig in his pockets, coming up with a rag that might have once been a sheet or towel. "Here." Even if he told himself it wasn't real, it was unsettling to see blood welling up in anyone's eyes.

Sam took the rag, gingerly. As if he were offering her uranium or some sort of isotopic solution. It took her a second to recognize the rag--and gesture--for what it was.

And a second longer to feel a small swell of panic.

Maybe Sam wasn't exactly the best Kindred. She had all the subtly of a bullbozer. But she knew what a Masquerade breach was. And she could tell from the way her eyes felt that she'd just made one.

Big time.

The fact that he wasn't freaking the fuck out and running for the hills was...puzzling.

"Thanks," she said, brushing the rag against her eyes. Two telltale smears of red were left behind.

The number of things in just the last few days worth running from had already sunk reality behind them: there was nowhere much to run to. Home was gone, as he'd always suspected. The familiar had been taken from them all, and all they could do was face each new thing standing or lying down.

And some days he stayed down, but he thought this was something he'd dealt with before.

The red on white caught his gaze; just a flick of the eyes, there and back to her face. It was a small thing, but he didn't think--it was one small thing too much. One thing to see blood where there wasn't any, but this was too consistent. Too convincing.

But to ask, even if it was blood on the ground, gave him away. She was bleeding or she wasn't, but he was crazy either way. He could call out to someone for a hand, judge it by their own reaction and back off, but--she didn't want that kind of help, and he couldn't betray that.

"No, no problem." His gaze went from drifting and dodging to steady, looking her dead in the eye. "Sam, are you sure you're okay? There's a lot going on, but I don't think anyone will be upset if you ask for some help." That steady gaze slides over, indicating the dark stain on the dirt.

If Avery were here, he would have looked into Jude's eyes, told him to forget he'd ever seen any blood, and they all would have gone about their merry way. Sam's feelings about the power of Forgetful Mind had always been a little bit torn. On the one hand, the way Avery used it, it protected them and spared lives. On the other hand, she was a proponent for free will.

And then, of course, the rat bastard had gone ahead and used the power against her.

Sam didn't know how to feel about that either.

But it was all academic, of course. Sam had never permitted herself to learn it. So she couldn't use it.

How was she supposed to explain away this blood?

"I..."

There wasn't a single lie she could conjure up. Not even a snappy retort. Snark, her old friend, had failed her.

"I'm in trouble," she said, softly.

Jude dragged his gaze between her and the puddle again, taking in the admission. He wasn't seeing things, which meant--she wasn't wrong, and they might all be in trouble. He might be fucked just standing there, but there was only one thing that made him panic, and blood wasn't it.

His jaw twitched once, as he grit his teeth. The tic evolved into biting the inside of his cheek, grappling with something so beyond him.

"One of the doctors, Ravi," he started, letting the words come as the thought formed in his head. Snatches of conversation, secondhand accounts. "Sometimes he talks about some things he dealt with, back home. He might be the best to ask. But we can get--whoever you want, for now."

His hand was still steady at her shoulder: there was enough blood on the ground, he worried how much longer she'd be upright.

Sam wasn't sure whether to laugh or feel insulted. As she wrestled with the decision, she covered her face with both hands. "'M not a zombie," she muttered into her palms. She wished she could make it sound funnier. The problem was, for most people, zombies weren't exactly a far cry from vampires.

Or the other way around.

Her teeth ached. She felt the pinpricks of her incisors, against the inside of her lip. She realized that the only reason she wasn't going fizzle pop was...

Well, either her Coils. Or else this wasn't earth's sun.

Both had some fucking scary implications.

"I don't think you're a zombie." Honestly, Jude was trying not to think too much on it at all--just, blood, weird; weird doctor. For all the weird shit he saw, drew, and had recently been through--Sam moved and cried and had a physical presence under his hand. He couldn't conceive of her as anything but alive.

"I just think, he might figure out what to do about--" he jerked his head at the blood stain. "That. 'Cause I can't."

It was the most concern Sam had felt for her well being in a long while. And that included herself and her own concern.

Or lack thereof.

Jude was a puzzle, to be sure. But he wasn't a dick. And that counted for a lot, really. Almost made Sam want to cry in a very different way.

But she didn't.

She shook her head a little bit. "Ravi can't fix me. I know what's wrong." It was a very, very rare moment of honesty. "I'm probably going to...die." Which was the preferable outcome. The alternative was hurting someone else. So, so not Sam's style.

Eyebrows up, he tracked that statement against the actual real puddle of blood, and almost wanted to chime in with an echoing probably. Even if Ravi knew what was going on, even if they had boxes of equipment--it wasn't medication, it wasn't anything he could imagine putting all of that back in where it needed to be.

But Jude wasn't a doctor. "Is it--something uncurable? Why wasn't it a problem before?"

Unless this was just some final stage, and Sam had been struggling this entire time. Flicking his gaze up to her wig, he draws the single, obvious conclusion.

She let out a single, ragged cough. Her lungs were perfectly fine. But her sense of humor was feeling pretty fucking rusty right now. "We'll have to take that up with our Overlords," she said. Some other people referred to them as 'Overseers,' but it just didn't feel right to Sam. Not in this clown rodeo.

At least she was starting to feel a little better. She'd hacked up the last of the stupid piece of stupid toast.

But it was a temporary fix.

The hunger would set in soon. She had no real concept of the last time she'd fed, or how much vitae was in her system. She'd stopped keeping track. Closing her eyes, she tried to make an assessment of her own system, but the panic was getting in the way. A panicking Kindred was a recipe for disaster, wasn't it?

"Jude," she said, looking up at him. "I know this is going to sound fucking crazy, but I need you to trust me. I have...to be locked up. And kinda soon." Better safe than sorry. While she didn't think she had any real friends here, there were plenty of people whose faces she didn't want to eat off.

It does sound crazy, especially with his immediate assumptions: things like this happen, but they aren't worth locking people up over. Not unless-- "Is it contagious?" Even as he asks the question, he makes himself leave his hand on her shoulder, makes himself be present. If it is, the damage is likely done, and he'll just have to deal with what follows.

And, gesturing to the puddle: "'Cause I think that cat's out of the bag already." Miserable as she looked, though, he hedged the question. "Look, I'll help you out, I'll do what you think is best, I just want to know why."

It was a perfectly reasonable question. And Sam didn't miss the fact that Jude stayed right where he was. She wasn't sure why, of course. But she was weirdly grateful, all the same.

That helped. Not that what she was about to say would ever, ever be easy.

"No," she said. "Not contagious."

She turned to look up at him. And the Beast came out like it had never gone.

Kindred weren't like the vampires on TV. Her eyes didn't turn back. No veins rose on the surface of her skin. No bumps or lumps or mumps. Sam was exactly the same as before, give or take two pinpricks slipping from beneath her upper lip. But there was a change in her all the same. The air of a predator emerging.

No doubt, she was a monster again.

Well, that backs him up half a step. He goes from a grip to her shoulder to his fingertips resting--but they do rest. The memory is still hit-and-run, choppy and out of context, but the change makes him think of Parker. Parker was always different, Parker was always--a little dangerous.

And there had been no changing it, but he'd done his best to embrace and contain it. Picked Parker up from a field in another county, looked at the thing behind his eyes and waited it out.

He doesn't think Parker ever popped fangs, but. He wouldn't have been wholly surprised if he had. "Alright," he breathes, keeping steady as he can. "Sam: what do you want to do."

On the whole, not the worst reaction she could have expected. And honestly, she wouldn't have blamed him if he'd freaked the fuck out. Good on him. Or something.

But his reaction was probably the least of her worries.

What did she want to do? She didn't have a clear answer. All she knew for sure was what she didn't want to do.

She shook her head a little. "I don't wanna hurt anyone," she said simply. So simple it sounded a little pathetic to her ears. But fine. Whatever. "And I'll only make it a few days before I started to get...hungry."

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[MINGLE] Breakfast Feast

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