"Merits" for the vamp Zutara challenge. Part Nine.
“Merits” - Part Nine
The morning was… rough.
An unusual silence welcomed her to her office on Monday morning, when Katara returned from the lab she taught. It was quiet, but it was that kind of ‘quiet where you knew someone’s there’-quiet.
Her new ‘roomie’ sat at his desk, reading over documents and professor-evaluations from the past several years.
He didn’t greet her when she entered.
“Morning,” said Katara pleasantly as she put her things down on her own desk and started her computer. While she’d woken up depressed at the thought of facing a week (and longer) with Zuko as a companion, she’d revised her initial opinion of him and decided to do her best to give him a chance to make a better impression. Her Gran-gran would be proud of her, she was sure.
Zuko barely glanced at her.
Maybe he’s not a morning person, that’s ok, I’m not either.
Trading her lab books for her notepad, a faintly insulted, but still optimistic, Katara left for her lecture.
“See ya later,” she called.
He ignored her.
She closed the door after her, piqued. It didn’t help that she’d noticed he’d cleared part of her bookshelves and left her pile of books on the floor, to make room for his own things.
Fortunately, she was looking forward to the day’s lab with her usual group of students and tried not to dwell on the snub.
And anyway, the afternoon still holds plenty of untapped potential, she told herself and cheered at the notion.
For a few minutes, Katara deluded herself into thinking all would work out fine, and she arrived at her lab with her usual sunny disposition.
In reality, she knew she was starting to hate having a roommate.
The afternoon was… worse.
“Have you met many people from the department yet?” Katara asked as she added dressing to her salad. She often ate at her desk in her office when she wanted to fit in a bit of extra reading over the noon hour. The cafeteria downstairs was too annoying to study in during the lunch hour, for obvious reasons - it was packed solid with hungry, rowdy students.
From his desk, Zuko looked up, surprised she’d addressed him again.
“No,” he answered. “Are you… eating?” he asked awkwardly.
“Yes… it’s lunchtime. Don’t you eat lunch, too?” she teased, an eyebrow raised. He really was odd.
“No.” The comment did seem to rouse him from his position behind his stacks of files, though. With that, he got up, walked to the window, and closed the blinds before returning to his seat to go over more documents. Putting another dossier on top of his pile, he worked away in silence.
“Was it too bright?” she asked curiously. She’d often sat at his desk while she worked and had enjoyed the way the sunlight poured in over her work, warming her. It was just the right angle to flow over the desk, yet avoid throwing glare in her eyes.
“No.”
He ignored her for the rest of the lunch hour, including her offer to grab him a coffee later that afternoon when she took her break - which she took early, mostly to get away from him. Refusing to admit defeat, she decided it was simply time to regroup… elsewhere. To her added shame, she found she had to physically restrain herself from slamming the door shut behind her while she went ‘regrouping’.
It was one thing to have material to review and peace in which to work away at it, she fumed to herself as she stalked across the campus to a further coffee shop than usual, but now he’s just being outright rude. His manner of avoiding even simple courtesies and interaction with her galled her tremendously.
Ironically, Zuko’s antisocialism had the opposite effect on Katara than he’d probably intended, and instead served to strengthen Katara’s resolve to get through to him, or be damned trying.
The Water Tribe woman dawdled in the library coffee shop twice as long as usual during her coffee break that afternoon, stewing and trying to figure a way to get her new office-mate to act human.
The evening was… unbearable.
Her night-class let out early, so Katara decided to return to her office to work on her research paper on the ‘vampires’ of her childhood legends. She was just about done with the last section, and wanted to finish it up before heading home to relax and get to bed.
It was another bitter night, and she was thankful of her warm office waiting for her. Possible causes of porphyria in the native tribes of Northern Territories, was the title of the section she mulled over in her head as she crossed campus back to the Medical Arts building. Porphyria was the name of the (now debunked) disease that many authors and scientists had once thought contributed to vampirism. Pale skin, recessed gums, and the need to acquire outside sources of heme (blood) due to the incomplete synthesis within the patient’s own body were all connected to the disease. The heme-related problem also occasionally left the victim very photosensitive - prone to extreme skin sensitivity under bright light. She had explored causes of genetic mutation, family-hereditary transmission, and was looking now at outside influences, like environment and diet.
A list of possibilities ran through her head and she plotted out in her mind the avenues to explore in the dissertation. As she opened the door to her workspace, she was unsurprised and doubly disappointed to see Zuko at his usual spot. Unknown to her, her forehead had puckered with mild irritation at his presence.
While irrational, Katara was beginning to think the man was stalking her in her office.
Shaking her hair out of her jacket, the determined-to-be-professional young woman settled in behind her desk with a polite, “Hey,” to her co-worker, and got to work.
Environment, she wrote down on a piece of paper. On another area of her desk, she retrieved her photocopied map of the Northern Territories, and on the areas where there’d been considerable outbreaks of the disease she’d marked a red ‘X,’ along with the dates of the outbreaks. Another piece of paper stapled to the map held a legend of the statistics related to the outbreaks, including roughly how many people had been involved, the specific legend-myth she thought related to it, and how long the legend had been around and the outbreak had lasted.
In a way, she was beginning to feel like Dana Scully from The X-Files; searching for the medical and scientific rationalization to these stories. It was kind of fun when she thought of it from that perspective. This cheered her. So she was Dana Scully; yay!
She glanced over at Zuko a moment, when she realized this, and her face darkened. If she was Scully, then Zuko was…
“Ugh,” she muttered aloud, and went back to her plethora of theme-organised cue cards.
Jerk probably has sister-issues, too, she mused.
A large medical tome balanced upright beside Katara’s keyboard, and she read softly out loud to herself the list of environmental factors that had affected the European outbreaks of the ‘vampire disease.’ She stopped as she came across one in particular, as it seemed eerily familiar: mercury.
“Mercury,” she repeated, louder this time.
She glanced at her map, an idea forming in the back of her mind, and she recognized the name of a town that had had a large mining facility at one point, about a hundred and fifty years ago. It had closed down due to mercury poisoning; and she remembered there being a native reservation nearby which had nearly died out from anemia around the same time, due to so many of the local animals falling ill from the mercury that had leaked into the water source…
Excitement enveloped her and she hastily reached for her keyboard, noisily knocking her medical text down with a bang in the process.
Zuko glared at her from across the room, but she didn’t notice.
“‘Mining town,’ ‘mercury,’ ‘Northern Canada or United States’…” she mumbled to herself, typing furiously in her web browser’s search engine. After clicking a few links, she found exactly what she was looking for: the image of a scanned map, including dart-points to illustrate a number of mining towns that had been affected by mercury poisoning between 1850 and 1925. Bingo!
It was not a complete list, but it was definitely a strong start - she could already see half a dozen points of correlation between her map of legends and outbreaks, and the scanned map on her screen of mercury-poisoned mining towns. Eureka!
“Ha! Hahahahah, I’ve got it!” Katara exclaimed, laughing out loud. “Now, do we have a copy of this book in our library?” she said aloud to herself and examined the web page for any reference to an author, publisher, or ISBN; her reputation was fried if she tried to list ‘Google’ as a reference on her annotated bibliography.
The first leg of the treasure hunt ended when she found the ISBN at the bottom of the web page, and copy-pasted it into a new web browser window with the library’s search engine already up. She was soon rewarded: two copies, both on the stacks.
“All right, now to go get that…” she glanced harder at the screen, and lost some of her earlier exuberance.
“Rats,” she muttered. They were in the Rare Book Collection room. She’d have to go in during the RBC’s restricted hours tomorrow to go through one of the copies. Luckily, Tuesday wasn’t too busy a day for her, and she’d be able to head in first thing.
It was a great deal of encouraging news in a relatively short period of time, and after her day of stress, she felt she’d earned it. She smiled and made a few more notes on her papers before starting to clear her things up.
Not a bad way to end the night, Katara decided, practically humming with accomplishment: She was going to ace this paper, the presentation, and hopefully even be able to get a publishable paper out of it! Triple-score!
Zuko glanced up at her triumphant sigh.
“No wonder your last roommate left,” he commented, head already back down on his papers.
And immediately ice water washed over Katara, stealing her happiness.
She’d completely forgotten about the man opposite her, she’d been so wrapped up in fantasizing about her success.
“What do you mean?” she asked, more sharply than she intended. Why had he said that? How was it this man managed to goad her so easily?
“Too noisy,” he said simply.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disrupt your ‘quiet’ time here in the crypt!” she snapped.
Zuko ignored her, infuriating Katara further. She felt her nose wrinkle as she clenched her teeth and hands angrily.
You are such a jerk, Zuko Sozin! Being nice to you is going to give me ulcers!
Forcing herself to calm down and regain her composure, Katara watched him and slowly unclenched her jaw and hands. You can do this - just like Gran-gran said, we don’t always see what’s really there. In a moment he could realize just how miserable an s.o.b. he really is, and apologise. Katara was ready to accept even false hope if it meant there was an ounce of courtesy in her roommate - that would mean there was a chance that their co-habitation would not be an insufferable term-long sentence. In her desperation, and out of respect for her mental health, she refused to consider the possibility the confinement may last longer than the current school term.
Putting a dossier back onto the ‘completed’ pile (Katara had figured out that much of his system, from how the stacks on his desk had shifted through the day), Zuko shut down his computer and started putting it into his laptop bag.
She waited for him to elaborate, to look at her, to acknowledge her in any way, but as usual, he ignored her.
Without another word, he turned off his lamp and left, leaving the door open behind him.
Katara scrunched her eyes shut and refused to scream.
Day One.
Zuko: One.
Katara: Zero.
For his part, Zuko almost chuckled as he walked to his car, the auto-lock chirping as he clicked a button on the remote.
“‘Crypt,’ hmph,” he said to himself. He hadn’t enjoyed a good crypt since the Victorian era in jolly old England…
Satisfied his cover was securely established, Zuko went over what he’d learned that day: He was already well versed in the department’s members and focus through the evaluations he’d reviewed, he’d memorized Katara’s schedule, and was quite familiar with many of the particulars of her employment and studies. He’d also managed to get under her skin, from the moment she walked in the door that morning, likely until she’d go to sleep that night. All she’d think about was him.
Quite a productive day indeed, he thought smugly to himself. He could see Katara was intelligent, but she wore her heart on her sleeve. Obviously, she held her beliefs close to her heart and had no hesitation in sharing her opinions.
He wondered for a moment if she’d be too easy, what with her transparency…
The moment was short-lived when he remembered her determination and obstinacy during her encounter with the thugs.
No, definitely not an easy one, he realized with mild amusement, and was surprised at his own eagerness to engage her; she will still fight. She will always fight.
Blue eyes full of conviction framed by a forehead with ribbons of dark hair sprang to mind, and suddenly she became a warrior: brave, confident, and unyielding.
The lovely woman would be a challenge. A prize.
Casting aside his reverie, the vampire put his car in gear and drove out of the lot. He’d be able to complete the full department evaluation within a few weeks, at most.
Toying with his new office-mate, however… The corner of his lips tugged temptingly, and he felt his canines lengthen slightly in anticipation. Katara…
Growling throatily, the engine sprang to life as Zuko pulled smoothly onto the highway. She was annoying at times, but definitely lively. She’d be divine.
He could hardly wait for the day she’d really lose her temper.
He’d take her then, and devour her.
AN: Please give a huge round of applause to renagrrl7for all her fantastic help as beta on this chapter! (Rena, I'm sorry I'm such a dash-and-hyphen ho!)
AN: Please don't take any medical / scientific remarks in this story as serious scientific fact. I'm googling and abusing coincidence. ;)