Day 55: Courtyard [2nd Shift]
After what seemed like an eternity of being amused, irritable, bored, in pain, in excruciating pain, and any combination of those, Guybrush was met by the same soldier who had led him to the cafeteria. He wasn't offered a trip to the Sun Room to check the bulletin board, but didn't push for it anyway. That would have been more walking, and moving
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She had tried to speak to Stefan yesterday on the topic of the book she was supposedly from, only to ... well, have him recoil in terror away from her. She couldn't help but wonder if Damon would act the same way once he approached her closer. Without really thinking, her hands lifted to pull the jacket closer to her neck, turning her head away as a momentary look of sadness crossed her expression. Who else are you going to hurt because of something you can't even control? Damn.
But she couldn't be sad now. Bella's lips turned upwards, all signs of sadness washing away as she gave Damon a smile in greeting.
Zen with the snow. Huh.
"Actually," she said, her tone nonchalant, "I hate the snow. Loathe it, really."
Bella looked up at the sky for a few moments longer. Finally, after a few seconds, she turned and looked at Damon straight in the eye so he would understand what she was getting at. The smile on her face suddenly turned amused - albeit it was a dark amusement, curiosity giving her eyes a wide look. Would he pretend she had no idea what she was talking about, or would he upright tell her the truth? And, even better, would he answer the questions she was going to ask? She hoped. She really didn't want to go back to Stefan ... yet, anyway. She just. ... Wanted him to not be afraid of her.
"But I'm sure you already knew that," she continued, brushing her fingers through her hair with an air of normalcy as she continued to stare at him. "Or. You know. Read about it. Right?"
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Damon quirked an eyebrow and smiled in a way that suggested he should've expected as much. "You know."
He moved around her to lean against a nearby tree. No point in putting weight on his leg. And maybe he wanted to put some distance between him and Bella. She was...distracting, and not in the sense he was used to, either. He'd noticed it the first time; clearly, this wasn't a one-off case. He'd rather not be distracted while trying to have a conversation. There was a time and place to feel like eating someone. Only civilized.
Reaching up, he broke off a twig from a low-hanging branch, sending a light sprinkle of snow to the ground. "Your Romeo decided to interview me about my reading experiences, too," he went on conversationally. "I flipped through maybe ten pages. I can tell you right now, you're better off plugging 'Bella Swan' into Google. However." He rotated the twig absently between his fingers. "Seeing how that's not an option, you're welcome to fire away. I'll do my best-promise."
He'd be curious to know what was on her mind, anyway. Equally curious: if she'd ever bring up his own...state of undead. Since she knew. She had to know. As if Edward hadn't told her. She would've been warned off or something dramatic like that. Warned off him, at least. Stefan-maybe, maybe not. His little brother and the Cullen kid were practically the same person, so who knew.
Point was, any vampire who decided to date a human, first thing on their mind was keeping other vampires away. Tragically, that never quite went as planned, did it.
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"If anything, I'm ... curious," she admitted, looking down. She watched as Damon pulled a twig, and she quirked an eyebrow, shaking her head after a moment as she brushed snow off of her shoulders. Augh. "Though, I ... don't know. What I really want to know is ..." she stopped, almost not wanting to know the answer to the question she was about to ask. "... Whose point of view was the book in? Or was it third person." Please, please, please. "Or you can tell me everything you read, ten pages and all."
At the mention of googling her own name, the teenager laughed. "I wouldn't get anything back home, you know. But ... I had a thought. Since I've seen a few characters I thought weren't real around here ... what if we're all fake? Or, what if we're all fake in our own worlds? Like maybe you're fake in my world, I'm fake in yours ... and Spider Man! What about him? How does he feel?"
Bella fell silent for a moment, chewing on her bottom lip. "Feel free to tell me to shut up whenever you want. Sometimes I talk a lot when I want to know things."
Which reminded her. The way Damon seemed ... a little distance off. "And ... if being near my becomes ... hard for you," she said in a soft voice, frowning, looking away. "Just tell me. I'll understand. I met your brother yesterday, and he was ... well. In pain."
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"Yours," Damon said. "Don't worry, there wasn't anything you wouldn't want scattered across Facebook. I mostly remember something about werewolves."
-Did she just ask about Spider Man's feelings? Well that sure came out of nowhere. He hoped she wasn't implying that Spider Man was here because-forget it. And yes, he was aware of the your world/my world talk floating around-since people were apparently pinning notes about it-and no, he wasn't speculating on this Twilight Zone crap. Why bother? There was no point. It wasn't like he had any personal experience to go on. Besides, the source was a bunch of people trapped in a building, desperate to make sense of it all. He'd be better off taking the word of a tabloid.
Though the existence of Bella and Edward was admittedly...difficult to explain.
He was about to say something, but she sidetracked him a second time. He tilted his head, studying her. That was unexpected. So she had this effect on everyone. She had to, if she knew. How did that even work? Every vampire's taste was unique. It was this whole thing to do with desire and hunger, etcetera, etcetera. Complicated, not worth getting into. In short, he'd never met anyone who was uniformly more appetizing than the others.
Or was she referring only to her being, you know. A natural food source. Possible-but no. Didn't exactly explain why she smelled the way she did. This kind of need to feed came attached with strong emotions, certain moods. He didn't have any of that.
Vampire bait. Took that one to a whole new level, didn't she.
Will it? Because he seemed to be in a lot of pain.
His little brother, ever-suffering in front of teenage girls everywhere. Of course.
"He was hungry," Damon said easily. "It happens. You weren't in any danger. If he thought he was going to eat you, he'd have bolted off a bridge. He's a do-gooder like that."
Side note-this should not be mistaken for him defending Stefan in any way. Stefan's problem drinking issues were Stefan's to deal with. Damon had already pitched in once, and the amount he owed his brother in the first place was in the red. But while he doubted Bella had or would-didn't seem the type-he didn't feel like risking her going to Edward with the information that Stefan couldn't control his urge to snack around her. Like he said before: vampires and their human girlfriends. Sometimes it got messy. He had enough inconveniences to handle without an overprotective vampire sprinkled on top.
Besides, as little as he cared, he was in fact aware that this wasn't on Stefan. For once. If they weren't here, they could actually feed properly and the matter of control wouldn't even be a problem. Less of a problem, anyway. He'd toyed, a few times, with the idea of locking Stefan in the basement after that...incident. Fair was fair. Until Stefan went and volunteered himself for the job, that was. But someone else doing what amounted to the same damage?
Yeah. Put it this way: he wasn't leaving this place without at least several heads.
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He was going to have a field day. He wasn't able to read her thoughts ... but now he didn't need to, since they were all apparently laid out on paper for the world to see. So much for the mental block she supposedly had. Obviously it didn't work that well if it was easy to translate them over to paper. Augh.
"Great," she said simply, despite the fact that Damon said it was nothing that important. Still, it was the principle of things.
At the mention of not being in danger, Bella gave him a small smile, shrugging her shoulders for a moment. "Can't blame a girl for asking. But that's ... uh, good to know, I guess. Not the whole jump off a bridge thing, I mean. Since that's not good, but you get what I'm saying."
"And don't worry," she added with a wave of her hand. "I won't tell anyone about you two. I'm used to this secret thing."
She was getting better at lying too, thankfully.
"Thanks for telling me," Bella concluded, smiling. "Not that I really ... wanted to know. But still. The more you know," she said with a wave of her hand, smiling after at her antics. "But enough about me. Please. How've ... uh, you been? Since we never really got to talk when we first met."
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Definitely would've paid more attention if he'd known he'd be running into incarnations of fictional lovebirds, but really, when you had an eternity of lovely memories to store away, some things just weren't worth remembering.
Most things.
Damon folded his arms across his chest and returned the smile. "Well, count on your secret being safe with me, too. I won't divulge your innermost thoughts, I promise."
He wasn't worried about her. Or Edward, for that matter. The logic of mutual benefits dictated that they wouldn't be going around spilling that there were a few people here who made a habit of biting people. People and bunnies. Same thing, minus taste value.
Not that he couldn't see Edward being a problem in the future; he could. But not a lot more than anything else could be a problem. For now, it was pointless to pursue it. Besides, Stefan had managed his dinner party with Edward without an apparent scratch on him so something had gone right there.
"Sure, of course. Anytime. I know this must be real freaky." There was a touch of sympathy, noticeable but still kept casual enough to be overlooked. When she turned the question period back on him, he appeared briefly thoughtful and shrugged. "I've had better days. Though I did run into an old friend..."
Who then died and came back to life. Nothing new there.
He nodded at the bandages on her neck, letting concern show through. Genuine? Maybe. Unlikely. Deliberate, without a doubt. "But I think I should be asking you that question. I'd ask what happened, too, but I figure you're not up for...reliving those details."
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Though, she also wished he wasn't there. At least that meant he was safe at home, back in Forks. ... Right?
At the mention of her wounds, Bella's hands fluttered up to her neck, surprised, as if she had forgotten they were there in the first place. "Oh, it's fine. I'm used to it after being here for a week or so," she said with a sigh. "Last night I went upstairs to the Chapel to try and get blood for Edward, but on the way there I ran into a few ... problems. As you can see.
"The first was a child, that ... burnt my arms or something," she lifted her arms, but since they were covered, she didn't really know why she did it. Just because, maybe. "But that wasn't what did this to my neck. On the way out, I was ... something that looked like Edward found me. And fooled me. And when I was close enough, it attacked, and did this. It was an exact copy. Perfect. Right down to the voice. Right down to ... to everything."
Until the face split into a horrific expression, but still.
"So be careful," Bella concluded, frowning. "This place has copies of the people we care for now too, apparently. If I hadn't been found by Edward's friend ... I'd have probably been killed up there."
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He frowned a little at her explanation. First: burning children, something to remember to stay away from. He'd nearly been barbecued once. Having another go at it wasn't high on his list of things to do before he died. If he, you know. Had such a list. It was a little too late. Second: the Edward clone. Great. There was another one. Or was this a different sort of fun-with-alter-egos moment? Stefan's experience had clearly been a projection. The little he'd detailed had all pointed to that. Bella, on the other hand...Damon couldn't say he was sure of the same. Edward hadn't even been anywhere nearby. Were they adding shapeshifters to the list now?
Well, why not. He was talking to Bella Swan, after all. "What's wrong with this picture" became pretty damn relative after that.
"That's not good." A pause. The chapel. Confirmation that this fountain of blood did exist, his roommate's claims otherwise aside, was nice to have, but-she'd gone there? What the hell for? "You realize your boyfriend had been off hunting with my brother."
She'd said she was used to being chewed on, so it wasn't as if she'd just been too stupid to know what was out there. What, had she just impulsively run off on her own, anyway?
Of course she had. For the sake of her beloved. Okay, he was making it official: her and Elena? Never going to meet.
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Did she realize Edward was hunting with Stefan? "Yes," the teenager said with a shrug. "But that didn't mean anything to me. What if they didn't succeed? What if they went out and found nothing, and came back even worse than before? I didn't want to risk it. I couldn't. I don't ... I don't like hurting those I care about just by standing next to them."
Hurting them because of her actions ... well. That was different. Or was it?
"So, that's what happened to me," she said with yet another shrug. "I guess ... it's not as bad as it could have been. Considering I could have died up there, but still. And besides, if it hadn't been that child, it could have been something worse. Last time I was up there, there was some ... crazy robot like man. With spinning blades. Needless to say, I'd have much rather taken the weeping, crazy inducing child. I like having all of my fingers where they belong, thank you."
Even though she wasn't exactly a bundle of knowledge on the hell that was known as Landel's, she was still glad to share the information she did know. Whether Damon already knew it or not ... well. She didn't know.
"Any other questions?" she asked. It kept her mind off of the pain coming from ... everywhere, after all.
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