World of Darkness World of Darkness: Attrition - Unbeating Heart [Fin]

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

(continued from Better Late Than Never)

Since you walked out on me

I’m getting lovelier by the hour.

I glow like a corpse in the dark.

No one sees how round and sharp

my eyes have grown

how my carcass looks like a glass urn,

how I hold things up in the rags of my hands,

the way I can stand though crippled by lust.

No, there’s just your cruelty circling

my head like a bright rotting halo.

~ Nina Cassian, “Lady of Miracles”

It wasn't a long walk from Declan's tidy little house to the urban manse that Lucien called home. Not a long walk at all. And yet, it was an ordeal.

We did good, leaving, it whispered, smooth and happy in ways that Sarah was not. They didn't deserve us.

There was a time where anything said by that inner whisper would have garnered an argument from Sarah. But now, the source was far closer to her than it had been before. For once, they were walking in step with each other, in each other's footsteps, bonded and accepting and one.

Time for the next one to go.

That gave Sarah momentary pause. As she did, a small of frat boys went past, on their way back to their house. By the time they caught sight of her, she already smelled their blood, and her eyes were locked on the tell-tale signs of well-developed arteries. Something about her gave the beefy jocks a serious case of the raging creeps; deep in their lizard brains, a desperate if unfamiliar alarm sounded the presence of walking death. The three gave her a wide berth, and their steps quickened as they headed across Hilgard, putting as much distance between themselves and the source of their preternatural unease as fast as their prideful and blissfully ignorant fore-brains would allow.

The scent of prey cleared, at least for the moment, and Sarah began walking again. She was halfway across the campus before she remembered to ask: "Why?"

Because he's a brick around our neck. Her hackles rose at the internal whisper, but it continued. Because he wants us like him, and we're nothing like him.

She tried to argue... and couldn't. Lucien was mortal and elegant. Sarah was undying and rough-hewn. All they had in common was that they were both different from the herd....

...and he wants us to be like them.

There was the crux. For all of Lucien's statements of how it was refreshing to have someone that didn't conform to the usual fare that flocked to his door and his bed, he'd been lamenting for months that Sarah wasn't social, wasn't cultured, wasn't more or less like those feckless fawns.

We're not like him. The whisper - truly a whisper no longer, but a true voice - built upon months of doubt and strained seams and bitter disappointments. So when it finished, its words were already there, already taken to heart. So end it.

With careful control, a monster rang Lucien's doorbell.

[Lucien Hunt]

Rosalind answered the door, the smile of her greeting quickly washed away by the sight of Sarah. The mortal could sense the predatory beast within her, the poise, the look in her eyes... instinct told her to get away from the thing as swiftly as possible.

"He's in the den watching the news." was all she said with worried fear rising up in her voice.

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

Worry was warranted; after all, Rosalind had no way to know for certain that she wasn't on this thing's menu.

It didn't flash her a smile - predatory or otherwise - in return. Instead, it just nodded in acknowledgement and uttered the single word, "Thanks". Without further delay, this thing that bore Sarah's face stalked with efficient grace toward the den.

No grand entrance was made; it didn't throw open the doors with a howl. It also didn't sneak, there being no point around the Mastigos. Rather, it actually expected that Lucien had a pretty far idea who and what it was right now, and probably a decent idea why it was here. So the amalgam of Sarah and her Beast simply stepped through the door, closing it behind, and said in a near-monotone, "Time to talk."

[Lucien Hunt]

Whatever it was, it wasn't Sarah and whatever it was Sarah had submitted herself to it willingly, that much was obvious from the calm emotional state and seething rage that mingled together within her aura. He put on his boardroom game face and looked at her with the full shroud of a true Mastigos washing over his features.

"I couldn't agree more." he said calmly as he tapped a button on the remote in his hand shutting down the massive television hanging upon the wall like a animated picture frame. "So," he crossed his legs spread his arms out wide to rest them on the back of the couch. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

"Our mess," answered the visitor, moving over to take up a once-familiar and comfortable position. Watching this Sarah/not-Sarah take up a seat on the barstool, however, was almost painful. It's motions were too smooth, and the pose was a few centimeters too much more feral. This wasn't Sarah in her characteristic perch; no, this thing was a tense bundle of muscle and barely concealed claws.

"Things are bad, Lucien. You say it to anyone who will listen. So we call it done. You can be free of the social embarrassment, and I can be free of your need for an ornament. Agreed?" The creature managed to use familiar lips and voice to create sounds almost entirely unlike those of the Sarah he had known and loved. For all her many flaws, she had never been this cold; for all her unlife, never this dead of heart.

[Lucien Hunt]

"Your mess," he replied plainly. "Not mine."

He never moved from where he sat, his expression calm and his tone icy enough to chill the bleakest heart. "The reason I say so is because yes, I have spoken to those who will listen in hopes that their counsel will offer me insight into how I might see where I'm going wrong, insight in how to fix this. I am- was willing to try to work on our problems and hopefully solve them. I see you are not."

"But do keep in mind that this is my home, my territory, my sanctum." He just stared at her, each word a dagger honed to a razor fine edge and polished with the rarest silk. "I can accept anger, aggression, and harsh words, and even insults. I will not accept, under my roof, a guest coming in and questioning my ethics and integrity. You would dare to say to my face that you simply fulfilled my need for an ornament? I've cared for you deeply, I've respected you as an equal, a friend, and a lover. I have shared the very essence of my life with you. You were interesting, intelligent, inspiring and, at one point, self-sacrificing and valorous in my eyes." Neither a flicker of disappointment nor a glimmer of disdain registered in his flinty gaze.

His hand waved in her direction. "Whatever 'this' is you have going on tonight is not the 'Sarah' I know. What I do know is that you've done this to yourself willingly. Whatever damage has been done here tonight between us will not be repaired later with some simple, 'I wasn't myself' excuse. I've suffered enough of your inhumanity for one evening."

"What we were, we are no longer. What you wanted, I've granted." One would've started to wonder if he planned on blinking anytime soon. "You have what you came for. I do believe you can find the exit on your own, yes?"

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

Her response was not immediate. Indeed, her first response was not verbal. It was, for lack of better terms, a twitch.

Somewhere inside, a piece of Sarah was screaming. The reality of what she and her shadow had just done hit without warning, and did so with all the dread force of a silver hammer. There was a difference between hearing herself fume and plot amid the sweetly savage words of her Beast, and actually seeing those words come to fruition with all their horrific effect.

In that moment, Sarah fought back.

The predatory half-smile slipped from her lips, and - uncharacteristically for either part of the amalgam - Sarah's undead body started to tremble, then genuinely shake. Something was happening, some manner of war within, and even in the midst of a brutal break-up it wasn't an easy thing to watch.

After a very long minute, the tremors stopped, and eyes that were clear and green once more looked up at Lucien in sorrow and hopelessness and loss.

"Y-you're right," she said, in a voice once more genuinely Sarah's, once more that of the woman he had loved. "It can't be excused, or undone. And we're no longer... what we were." She slipped down from the stool and stood there for a moment, looking at the floor about a yard in front of Lucien's feet. "I..." she began, then stopped, her effort ending in a choked sound. There was nothing she could say; he was completely right, after all.

Without another word and desperately trying to escape before bloody tears could form and fall, Sarah ran from Lucien's home and his life.

Click to reveal..

Forcing the end of the Red Surrender (Resolve + Composure):

(02:15:56) ChatBot: (Sarah_Dead-Wolf) rolls 5d10 and gets 3,7,6,10,3.

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