In Times Like These At Least I Have The Character

He jumped off the balcony, says Nicolas. The beast overtook him, maybe he saw a particularly delicious looking Kine and the last vestiges of his hunger, for he does not seem the type to finish his meals, reared their ugly head.

Shade himself seems shaken by this suggestion. At the very least she fixed his legs after the fall. Of course it hurt more than natural healing ever would have, but he has not been as good a guest as he could be, so clearly it is deserved.

Of all of them, he seems to cling to his humanity the most. He rejects her work and her vicissitude out of fear or hatred, yet seems to try to empathise with Nicolas, as though such a thing is even possible.

If she could remember how to, she would laugh.

She remembers how Nicolas talked about Elizabeth, her Elizabeth, as though she were no different from the blood bags the Camarilla driver had graciously given them. He thinks of her as an object, but is so crude about it. Would one take a bite out of a particularly useful vacuum cleaner, or drink from a lovely painting? No, Elizabeth may be hers, but her purpose is not to be consumed.

She resolves to keep a close eye on Elizabeth when she next comes for work.

She resolves to keep a close eye on Nicolas, lest he prove himself to be less polite than she thinks.

But, back to the matter of Shade. He seemed to wish to present her with some overwhelming truth about her own existence. He reacted with shock to the news that she had barely left the premises - indeed that she was actually incapable of it - as well as the revelation that she had never been paid a wage, and that she simply worked because she had been told to.

None of this seems particularly odd to her. Is there any particular reason it should?

For Maria he seemed to show great disdain, acting as though she had abandoned her in the house of a stranger, when she was clearly busy with work or preoccupied by some other matters.

She would never abandon Ophelia, right?

These matters have been gnawing on her since she invited the coterie to stay at hers - one of the many reasons for which she made Shade’s legs hurt so very badly. She resolves to dispel her concerns for now, and focus on the task at hand.

Shade fell victim to the beast, and jumped.

Dear Nicolas told her this, and she has no reason to distrust him. He may arouse her suspicion in some regards, but he has yet to lie to her.

But poor Shade. She could spend hours listing the reasons for which she is coming to dislike him. His barely disguised fear, his constant oscillating between treating her and Nicolas as pitiful victims and dreadful monsters, his anger leading him to threaten one of her guests under her roof, his unending infantilising insistence on calling her ‘kid’ out of some deluded paternal affection towards the unfortunate misguided girl he sees her as.

To know that this is the case could well and truly break him. As one of her guests, she has a responsibility to avoid that.

So she lies. It does not matter if all can see that she is lying. The purpose is not to be believed, it is instead to plant seeds of doubt.

‘The balcony is in some disrepair, and I have been meaning to fix it for a while.’

None of this is true.

But, just maybe, it could delay Shade’s inevitable descent towards the savage and violent clutches of the beast until he is out of her house and far away from her Elizabeth.

And if that is not the case, and he is moved to damage what belongs to her, she will tear him apart and rebuild him in the image of the monster that he tries so desperately to avoid being.

Nicolas seems to dislike him as well. Maybe after his limbs are made useless, she should hand him over to Baudelaire for a while before she reshapes him. He has, after all, wronged him.

It would be the polite thing to do, would it not?

It is the first bit of normalcy she has had since her boss vanished.

For three lovely days and nights, she was able to play the role of host, and Drakan the role of valued guest.

She gave him a room, she kept him well fed, and she was as polite as always. In return, he taught her the rules and laws of their clan. He told her how their particular variety of hospitality functioned.

After three days and three nights, he left.

He gave her a gift.

He gave her a knife.

It’s an old thing. It is so very sharp, and comes to a tidy point. The handle is worn and aged, yet the blade shines as though it has never been used.

She takes it in her hand, holds it.

Her cold skin matches the cold of the metal hilt.

She makes a few attempts at cutting and stabbing with it. Her movements are clumsy, lacking her usual grace. No amount of skill at needlework or using a broom has prepared her for this. Even if she were to find herself in a fight, she would much prefer to grow claws or twist and reshape the bodies of her opponents.

But she has been given a gift, and she intends to accept it in every way she can.

She needs to practice.

She goes to one of the spare rooms. She fixed this one herself. She made the bed. She fixed the walls. She crafted the decorations.

For now, none of this matters.

She takes all those raw materials, and shapes them into the thing she needs.

She builds muscles and a skeleton and vocal cords and eyes and teeth.

She takes a brain, but leaves it as empty as it was when she made it into that pretty thing over the fireplace, and puts it inside the body.

Soon, her preparation is done.

She lashes out with her new knife, embedding it in the dummy’s eye.

It jerks and twitches. It screams. It does not fall or move backwards.

She is satisfied.

She removes the blade, and fixes the dummy.

She lashes out again. She cuts its throat. The cerebrospinal fluid it is using as a surrogate for blood spills out.

She steps back, and fixes the dummy.

She moves around the dummy, and crouches swiftly, striking at its legs. She cuts the muscles that keep it standing, and it tumbles to the ground. It cries out again at this.

She steps back, and fixes the dummy.

She walks back around to its front. This time, she strikes lower. She draws her blade through the skin of its belly. Guts come tumbling out. Tears fill the eyes of the dummy.

She steps back, and fixes the dummy.

She plunges the blade into the flesh between its neck and shoulder.

She steps back, and fixes the dummy.

She strikes it under the arm, nearly tearing it off the joint with the force and precision of her blow.

She steps back, and fixes the dummy.

This goes on for a while.

By the end of her practice, she has become quite adept with a knife. Her movements are exact and calculated. She is graceful again.

She has grown rather fond of this knife.

She fixes her attention on the dummy. Tears stain its face. Viscera and cerebrospinal fluid tarnish the floor around it. It is covered in scars, borne from wounds that have been too rapidly healed.

Its eyes seem to plead with her. She ignores it, and returns all of the materials to their proper places.

She leaves the room with a soulless smile on her face. She wonders what it would be like to practice on something that could still act and think.

But first, she has made a mess, and it is her job as a maidservant to clean it up.

you are NOT my “passenger princess” get off your phone we are Under attack!!!!!!!! you are my gunner; man the weapons and defend our vehicle with your life!!!

POV: you wake up from a mouse bite induced coma

guy who thinks that being forced to live in a human body is a form of divine torture surprised to learn that she actually quite enjoys living in a girl’s body.

why is the face for a masquerade breach the same as

Autistic trauma is so devastating and yet so corny. You'll be doing everything perfectly normal in public but someone will sneer at you and you'll spend an hour agonizing over yourself like "fuck what if no one told me it was Don't Wear Yellow Thursday"

been building a collection of posts from like minded individuals

People who've never seen Zeta Gundam but know about the whole "Char puts on sunglasses and calls himself Four Vaginas" thing don't actually understand what's funny about that. It's not the "oh this paper-thin disguise is working" that's funny; most of the returning characters from '79 never saw Char and don't know what he looks like (and the ones that do aren't fooled for a second) and he takes the sunglasses off all the time anyway. No, what's funny is that he cannot shut the fuck up about how cool and sexy Char is, wouldn't it be funny if you were in the presence of someone that cool and sexy, and half of the other characters are like "huh yeah I'd sure love to meet Char one day wonder if I ever will" and the other half are dying inside.