Wallie Smith / Lord Shonsu (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
reluctantsword) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
kore_logs2012-12-03 03:48 pm
reluctantsword) wrote in kore_logs2012-12-03 03:48 pm
Entry tags:
Is it the welcome wagon
Who: Wallie Smith and Anna Demirovna
When: Evening, day 16
Where: Wallie's house.
What: At last, meeting in public.
Wallie had tea on.
He suspected Shonsu would have rather died than make tea for an impending guest, but as far as Wallie figured, he was operating more in his own world than Shonsu's. So never mind what Shonsu might think.
As it was, he was feeling a bit ridiculous. Whoever the previous owner of the house had been, the man of the house had apparently been quite a bit smaller than Shonsu was, and Wallie was a bit pressed for clothing that might fit Shonsu's much larger frame. Pants were, at present, an impossible dream, so Shonsu's blue kilt would have to do for now. Sorry, Anna. At least he had managed to find a shirt that sort of fit, even if he couldn't button it up.
He really would have to ask around for clothing donations, at some point.
When: Evening, day 16
Where: Wallie's house.
What: At last, meeting in public.
Wallie had tea on.
He suspected Shonsu would have rather died than make tea for an impending guest, but as far as Wallie figured, he was operating more in his own world than Shonsu's. So never mind what Shonsu might think.
As it was, he was feeling a bit ridiculous. Whoever the previous owner of the house had been, the man of the house had apparently been quite a bit smaller than Shonsu was, and Wallie was a bit pressed for clothing that might fit Shonsu's much larger frame. Pants were, at present, an impossible dream, so Shonsu's blue kilt would have to do for now. Sorry, Anna. At least he had managed to find a shirt that sort of fit, even if he couldn't button it up.
He really would have to ask around for clothing donations, at some point.
it's like a "whose life is more batshit" competition
"Yes. That." A pause, and she closed her eyes, gathering herself. "That doesn't have anything to do with being a being Kindred, to, ah, clarify. But... a lot of things went wrong, in Chicago, before I came here. If there are different worlds, then maybe this didn't happen to your Chicago, but for me, in my Chicago? In 1931, the True Fae came. They're fairies, I suppose, but nothing like the ones in children's stories. They probably have more in common with your gods than the cute little winged children I'd always pictured."
She sighed. Her eyes stayed closed: somehow it made telling the story easier, if she didn't have to watch his face while she told it, didn't have to guess at what he must be thinking. "The True Fae are...reality warpers. Creatures of dreams and glamour and emotion, and we—" she caught herself, "—they were having a competition, right in our city, over the right to claim it. And it didn't seem that there was anything we could do: they were just too powerful.
"Some were worse than others, though, and the worst one of all — his title was The Baron — seemed to be the front-runner. One of them, the Queen— she had three aspects. Queen, Crone... and Huntress." Her words were stunted, uneven; the whole thing was hard to talk about. "She summoned me to a party. By then I was trying to avoid the Fae — we all were — but I didn't seem to have a say in it. And, well... "
Anna paused again, opened her eyes, and looked directly at Wallie. Her expression was imploring. "You have to understand: I thought we were doomed — that the best we could possibly hope for was to defeat the Baron, but that some Fae taking over was inevitable. So... I told the Queen that I thought it would be better if she won. And she wanted to give me a gift — free of charge, she was insisting. Since it didn't seem she would let me go until I took her up on it, I asked for a weapon — a weapon that would defeat the Baron.
"So... she gave me a lightning bolt. I— I thought that was it — the weapon. And it was a weapon, in a manner of speaking. But it was also more than that. It was a fragment of her power — and of her personality: it was the Huntress."
Anna looked away again. "And now, well... I'm both. The Huntress and who I was before."
Re: it's like a "whose life is more batshit" competition
Wallie leaned forward a little, for the moment forgetting to be disturbed at her being a vampire. "That's... well, that's incredible. If I can ask... do you feel a clear line between both personalities, or is it blurred?"
no subject
Well, he didn't seem to be panicking — that was something.
"Mostly, they're distinct: I'm either myself or —also myself, but the Huntress instead of Anna." A pause, and her lips twisted wryly, "...You see what I mean by 'complicated.'" The half-smile was more performance of humor and ease than anything; in reality, the subject was painful and confusing, and she could feel the tension that remained around her eyes, despite her effort to keep her expression mild.
"Fortunately, being —her doesn't happen often; mostly there's just... her self-assurance, her brutality, sometimes sort of hovering at the back of my mind. But I can't fully make myself think of either personality as not 'me" — not because I can't tell the difference, but because what 'me' means is...a matter of perspective, I guess."
She made herself exhale a long breath — she'd been holding it without meaning to; old habits died hard — and added, "I've only been like this for about a month. It's...a lot to deal with, and it didn't exactly make me very popular among the rest of the Kindred: they'd had more than enough to do with the Fae." And that didn't even begin to get started on what the whole thing had done to her relationship with Leander.
no subject
"I've been Shonsu for about a year now. For the most part, I can say I've been myself, with differences, but there was a time when Jja -- my wife, although she wasn't then -- when Jja wanted nothing to do with me. She could see me becoming Shonsu, and frankly, Shonsu was no gentleman."
Which was a polite way of saying he'd been a murderer and probably a rapist. And Jja had been, technically, his slave, and bound to accept his advances regardless. It had been... pretty awful.
"I can... I can understand, a little. It wasn't the same, but I can understand."
no subject
"I swear I didn't set out to tell you all this — even though as soon as you started telling me a bit about your own experiences over the communication contraption... I admit I was curious." She could probably stop referring to it as a contraption, but how else was she meant to express her disgust with the newfangled thing she was suddenly supposed to master?
"There seemed to be so many parallels between our stories... and I guess you could say that it's been suddenly rather lonely. The other Kindred wouldn't trust me, and... I don't know, maybe they were right not to." It wasn't something she ever would have admitted to anyone within her own social circle — too much personal pride was at stake — so for once Wallie's outsider status made him seem a safer confidant. "So, if you can believe me, it's actually a relief to me to hear that you know what it feels like to, well, feel yourself becoming less than a gentleman. Or a lady, as the case may be."
She smiled, then — somewhere between bright and sad.
no subject
Wallie gave a small, tired smile as he remembered what it was she's called herself.
"So to speak."
no subject
(She knew exactly what she was doing, of course, the predator playing at damsel in distress, and if he were smart he wouldn't buy it for a minute — or so a nasty part of her conscience reminded her, and she wasn't sure if it was Anna or the Huntress who did the reminding — but none of that made it false, exactly. Just...deliberate.)
"Please, though, Wallie," her expression was imploring, "you can't tell anyone about me. I mean, what I told you about what I am. I trust you because you're different too, in your way, but if the others found out..." She averted her eyes; bit her lip: her meaning was clear enough. "Being what I am brings its share of weaknesses, and I'm sure I'd be killed if they learned." Well, she was already dead, but the final death was a true enough fear, if a group took it upon themselves to burst into her room during the daytime.
A flicker of her eyelashes, and she looked up and met his eyes again.
no subject
"I think I can promise that," he said, "but I'd like you to tell me something."
It was, he thought, a delicate question, but he needed to know. Not just for his own sake, but for the sake of everyone here.
"You subsist on blood," he said, picking his words carefully. "And nothing else, you said. You must be eating, but I don't think it's out of place to ask... what."
Or whom. Either way.
no subject
Her eyes still had that wide, half-desperate expression — maybe now a bit wider: hurt.
(Still Anna knew precisely what she was doing; wanted so badly for him to believe it all the same.)
"You don't trust me." She looked down at her folded hands. "But I suppose that's only fair." And her eyes glanced back up to meet his again. "Still, you should know that I've been feeding on animals — I'm still very young; I can do that. There may be others here who could easily recover from...assisting me, if it's true that I'm not the only, ah, non-mortal here, but until I can confirm that, I— I won't hurt anyone."
no subject
"Maybe I don't trust you," Wallie said, with as genuine a smile as he could muster, "but I did just meet you, and this is still very new to me."
To be fair, there were a lot of other things he wanted to ask her about vampirism, how close was it to legends and which legends, but now maybe wasn't the time.
"Your secret is safe with me, Anna. I can promise you that."
no subject
That, at least, was complete honesty. There was a part of her — well, most of her — that was utterly panicked at the notion of just how thoroughly she'd broken the Masquerade for this man she barely knew. She wanted him to...well, she wanted him to like her. Entrancement crossed her mind, of course, but...it felt like cheating.
She sighed, ran a hand through her hair. "Thank you for listening."
no subject
"But either way, I think I can easily promise not to reveal your transgression to your Kindred, if it matters to you. If it comes up." He shrugged easily. "I won't lie and say this is easy for me to accept; it isn't. But I have some practice at coping with previously impossible things, so."