Pardon Me While I Burst...
Inside her there's longing
This girl's an open page
Book marking - she's so close now
This girl is half his age
Don't stand, don't stand so
Don't stand so close to me
She lies awake at dusk, as she has on most evenings for the past few weeks, languid and peaceful in the relative warmth of her bed. Everything feels different. Sensations are much more palpable now, almost enjoyable - and she wonders how one could ever stand being numb, while she also wonders too how anyone could stand feeling so much. Thinking about it makes her feel a little weak.
She’d made a mistake the night before. She was right to tell Alejandro...she had been wrong to ask him for...help. All the real solutions are too complicated, or too selfish, or will cause more problems for others. It might hurt Julian. It may hurt Layla, and perhaps Rene - he simply may not understand why she would do this with - with someone who was not J.B. But she has to walk this lonesome valley for herself. She has to know that what she wants - what she thinks she needs - is the right thing, and not simply some additional temptation.
There is only one way she knows to do that right now. She can’t stay here - she should go be alone, without distraction. She’ll go back to Seattle. There are things to investigate there, anyway, and by the sounds of it she needs to arrange for Joe and Emanuel move out of the city. She breathes out a small, quiet sigh, and licks her lips. Alejandro isn’t going to like this.
There is salt on her lips. She opens her eyes to the taste of it - salt, but with a slightly coppery tang. Blood. There is blood on her lips. She sits up, looking across the room into the mirror at the dark trails down her cheeks, wound into her hair, and dried into the sheets on her bed. She was crying in her sleep.
Carlos is going to be livid.
There’s no use in delay - hardly any one else is up, and she can avoid a fuss if she acts now. She strips the sheets from the bed and submerges them in warm water to get at least a little of it out before she takes them to him.
The blood will not come out. Carlos is going to be livid.
Neither will the blood come off her cheeks or out of her hair, so she covers it as best she can and goes to find him, to apologise for ruining his sheets, and hoping that there’s something that can be done for them beyond what she’s tried.
She has nothing to apologise for, he tells her. He sees nothing wrong with them - she must have managed well with her attempts, and whatever damage is negligible. But he will take them to be dried, and send new ones for her. She sees the blood on the sheets. It’s still there. He just doesn’t see it.
He can’t see it.
I’ve got to get out of here.
A phone call, and everything is arranged. She packs what little she will need under the guitar - a change of clothes and a few other bits - and sits then, in front of the mirror. She will go downstairs at some point a little later, to be sure that none of the vampires present notice it, or mention anything of the sort. If they don’t...even more reason to go.
Time. Perhaps all she needs is time to herself for a bit.
She frowns at the mirror - the streaks have not smudged or faded at all. Maybe…oh, it’s never a good idea to do this. But I have to know that I’m not loosing my mind again.
She places a finger on one of the lines.
Too fast. Despair, so utter and black she can barely think or see or even move. Her heart for a moment begins to actually beat and her body grows unnaturally chill. It’s so cold. So, so cold. She gasps and breath shudders out of her with the erratic beating of her heart - she can see it. Her breath is warmer than the air.
"Unworthy...” she hears, all around her and crammed into her head from a voice she knows is borne of this blood on her face, which tries to incite her into Rage.
”...Thou art unworthy...I anoint thee my sacrifice."
No. So be it. But I will not succumb to It. The Beast does not own me - and nor do you. The rage fades.
She can’t see - and then she can. The blood is still there on her cheeks - the reddish stains of tear tracks mark her skin. But it’s gone from her hair. All of it. She glances over at the pile of discarded nightclothes. The blood is gone from them, too.
She reaches out to inspect what had been a stained shirt and staggers backward. Her hand, the hand she touched the tears with, looks soaked in blood.
She rubs at it with her shirt, claws at it, runs scalding hot and freezing cold water over her hand. Nothing has any effect.
Oh, Mother...oh, Madre de Dios - I can’t stay here. It isn’t really there, Carlotta. It is not truly there. You know it. Stop. You can feel it. The blood is not there.
Then why does she see it?
Blood and temptation. Isn’t that much of what it comes down to in the end?
She leaves for Seattle after a few words to Alejandro - and Julian, who’s returned. It’s a further indication that she should take the time before Conclave to collect herself, to be alone - to tend to the mortal men under her care. When she does get there, there is an invitation to a meeting that very night - she’s already late for it.
Sasha will be there. Perhaps she can talk to Sasha about the blood.
Confusion reigns. It is not the shroud that has fallen here - the Astral Realm is bleeding into the world. The Kindred and Vampires of the city have been alerted to an Infernal creature, raised with one purpose - to destroy Sasha, and her ilk. All the Children of Seth, as the Sabbat call them, who would battle the Infernalists. It is destroying the barrier between the Astral plane and the real world so that it might, eventually, destroy us all.
The Sabbat were right, an old man said, but they’d been going about it all wrong.
Free will. They are given a choice, and gifts. She stares, often, at the mark - the Mark of the Healer. She knows exactly what it would do - return someone from the brink of death. Not raise the dead - but bring them back to living. And the entire time, she knows that her Humanity - higher than anyone there - is pulling her towards Sasha, whom she’d come to speak with, but whom being less than three feet away from makes her feel like her blood and her flesh is on fire. And then Quinn, the desolate loud mouth with nothing to live for, touches her. He bursts into flame before Carlotta can stop it. She forces herself to watch with both sights. The end - the very end - his aura changes. Mortal. Redeemed.
A tug - but then nothing. Nothing but the growing desire to go to Sasha and touch her. She’s not willing to do it until she knows what it means - that what she could do with Kevin might be bigger than this. What sacrifice? Is Sasha the key?
The house is coming down around them. It’s time, the old man tells them. They are pulled towards a place called Pioneer Square - she goes with them because this entity is trying to destroy the one human of the bunch, and she senses that the Mark she’s been given, while double edged, will somehow be important. The creature hungers for her, and Sasha too has a bigger part to play.
The Astral Realm is the only realm in the Square, it seems. It is a cyclone - a maelstrom, the man with the mask says - that shreds everything in its path. It moves, shudders, when we arrive. Sasha becomes its eye. Creatures reach for her, but the cannot get past the vampires that surround the woman. There is noise everywhere, but none of it is like anything she has ever heard.
She is weeping tears of blood again. But so, too, is Sasha. Before long, she realizes that there are more of them - five, all told, who weep. They are on one side of the line. Some stand in the middle, and far more than Sasha's side stand opposite.
A monstrous, black, glacial creature, inside and around the body of a pale Malkavian - many of the Sabbat, a few of the Kindred who are too close to their beasts and more who have accepted It altogether. They feel another pull entirely. And now, she knows.
This is right. I may be destroyed, I may be a sacrifice, but this is right. What I have done - I have faith that I have done as well as I can.
She doesn’t watch much. She stands just in front of Sasha, feeling her blood boil though she is pulled towards the woman, and takes blows without retaliation. She is weeping still, and can feel the blood leaving her in a slow but steady stream. She is not the only one. Marco stands, stoic as ever, Tiana is poised but perhaps uncertain and neither of them weep - and Celestine, as well, right behind Sasha to shield her from the claws of the roiling black beasts. Others, too, that she does not know. And Maxwell, the Gangrel who loved Alexandra's pallea, he stands in front of them all.
Until Sasha steps forward and wraps her arms around him, and he, too, bursts into flame. Everyone can see it now, in the end - redeemed. Mortal, and redeemed, before he is dust. Then another tug, and another step towards the woman, who falls to her knees when Celestine, Marco and Tiana collapse.
Skarrin? Is that - but he has no chord! It's - that’s...Skarrin.
The three astral bodies join the dead King of Harpies to fight the Beast - but Sasha needed Celestine. Carlotta takes her place with only a twinge of irony to tweak her memory at the exchange of places before she looks down at the woman.
Sasha is half dead. More than that. Blood is pouring out of her eyes, her finger nails, it’s covering her shirt. She will not last much longer - and the Beast is getting stronger.
Go on, Alex. It’s a double edged sword. Use it - it will only cut you, not her. This is right. You've done the best you could.
One moment - she sends reassurance across the mental link and wishes she had time for more. If she is meant for more than this, then she will have more time, afterwards - now, there isn’t any. Sasha slumps forward, and Carlotta kneels to wrap her arms around the little woman.
She, too, bursts into flame. She has never felt such a blessed peace.
This girl's an open page
Book marking - she's so close now
This girl is half his age
Don't stand, don't stand so
Don't stand so close to me
She lies awake at dusk, as she has on most evenings for the past few weeks, languid and peaceful in the relative warmth of her bed. Everything feels different. Sensations are much more palpable now, almost enjoyable - and she wonders how one could ever stand being numb, while she also wonders too how anyone could stand feeling so much. Thinking about it makes her feel a little weak.
She’d made a mistake the night before. She was right to tell Alejandro...she had been wrong to ask him for...help. All the real solutions are too complicated, or too selfish, or will cause more problems for others. It might hurt Julian. It may hurt Layla, and perhaps Rene - he simply may not understand why she would do this with - with someone who was not J.B. But she has to walk this lonesome valley for herself. She has to know that what she wants - what she thinks she needs - is the right thing, and not simply some additional temptation.
There is only one way she knows to do that right now. She can’t stay here - she should go be alone, without distraction. She’ll go back to Seattle. There are things to investigate there, anyway, and by the sounds of it she needs to arrange for Joe and Emanuel move out of the city. She breathes out a small, quiet sigh, and licks her lips. Alejandro isn’t going to like this.
There is salt on her lips. She opens her eyes to the taste of it - salt, but with a slightly coppery tang. Blood. There is blood on her lips. She sits up, looking across the room into the mirror at the dark trails down her cheeks, wound into her hair, and dried into the sheets on her bed. She was crying in her sleep.
Carlos is going to be livid.
There’s no use in delay - hardly any one else is up, and she can avoid a fuss if she acts now. She strips the sheets from the bed and submerges them in warm water to get at least a little of it out before she takes them to him.
The blood will not come out. Carlos is going to be livid.
Neither will the blood come off her cheeks or out of her hair, so she covers it as best she can and goes to find him, to apologise for ruining his sheets, and hoping that there’s something that can be done for them beyond what she’s tried.
She has nothing to apologise for, he tells her. He sees nothing wrong with them - she must have managed well with her attempts, and whatever damage is negligible. But he will take them to be dried, and send new ones for her. She sees the blood on the sheets. It’s still there. He just doesn’t see it.
He can’t see it.
I’ve got to get out of here.
A phone call, and everything is arranged. She packs what little she will need under the guitar - a change of clothes and a few other bits - and sits then, in front of the mirror. She will go downstairs at some point a little later, to be sure that none of the vampires present notice it, or mention anything of the sort. If they don’t...even more reason to go.
Time. Perhaps all she needs is time to herself for a bit.
She frowns at the mirror - the streaks have not smudged or faded at all. Maybe…oh, it’s never a good idea to do this. But I have to know that I’m not loosing my mind again.
She places a finger on one of the lines.
Too fast. Despair, so utter and black she can barely think or see or even move. Her heart for a moment begins to actually beat and her body grows unnaturally chill. It’s so cold. So, so cold. She gasps and breath shudders out of her with the erratic beating of her heart - she can see it. Her breath is warmer than the air.
"Unworthy...” she hears, all around her and crammed into her head from a voice she knows is borne of this blood on her face, which tries to incite her into Rage.
”...Thou art unworthy...I anoint thee my sacrifice."
No. So be it. But I will not succumb to It. The Beast does not own me - and nor do you. The rage fades.
She can’t see - and then she can. The blood is still there on her cheeks - the reddish stains of tear tracks mark her skin. But it’s gone from her hair. All of it. She glances over at the pile of discarded nightclothes. The blood is gone from them, too.
She reaches out to inspect what had been a stained shirt and staggers backward. Her hand, the hand she touched the tears with, looks soaked in blood.
She rubs at it with her shirt, claws at it, runs scalding hot and freezing cold water over her hand. Nothing has any effect.
Oh, Mother...oh, Madre de Dios - I can’t stay here. It isn’t really there, Carlotta. It is not truly there. You know it. Stop. You can feel it. The blood is not there.
Then why does she see it?
Blood and temptation. Isn’t that much of what it comes down to in the end?
She leaves for Seattle after a few words to Alejandro - and Julian, who’s returned. It’s a further indication that she should take the time before Conclave to collect herself, to be alone - to tend to the mortal men under her care. When she does get there, there is an invitation to a meeting that very night - she’s already late for it.
Sasha will be there. Perhaps she can talk to Sasha about the blood.
Confusion reigns. It is not the shroud that has fallen here - the Astral Realm is bleeding into the world. The Kindred and Vampires of the city have been alerted to an Infernal creature, raised with one purpose - to destroy Sasha, and her ilk. All the Children of Seth, as the Sabbat call them, who would battle the Infernalists. It is destroying the barrier between the Astral plane and the real world so that it might, eventually, destroy us all.
The Sabbat were right, an old man said, but they’d been going about it all wrong.
Free will. They are given a choice, and gifts. She stares, often, at the mark - the Mark of the Healer. She knows exactly what it would do - return someone from the brink of death. Not raise the dead - but bring them back to living. And the entire time, she knows that her Humanity - higher than anyone there - is pulling her towards Sasha, whom she’d come to speak with, but whom being less than three feet away from makes her feel like her blood and her flesh is on fire. And then Quinn, the desolate loud mouth with nothing to live for, touches her. He bursts into flame before Carlotta can stop it. She forces herself to watch with both sights. The end - the very end - his aura changes. Mortal. Redeemed.
A tug - but then nothing. Nothing but the growing desire to go to Sasha and touch her. She’s not willing to do it until she knows what it means - that what she could do with Kevin might be bigger than this. What sacrifice? Is Sasha the key?
The house is coming down around them. It’s time, the old man tells them. They are pulled towards a place called Pioneer Square - she goes with them because this entity is trying to destroy the one human of the bunch, and she senses that the Mark she’s been given, while double edged, will somehow be important. The creature hungers for her, and Sasha too has a bigger part to play.
The Astral Realm is the only realm in the Square, it seems. It is a cyclone - a maelstrom, the man with the mask says - that shreds everything in its path. It moves, shudders, when we arrive. Sasha becomes its eye. Creatures reach for her, but the cannot get past the vampires that surround the woman. There is noise everywhere, but none of it is like anything she has ever heard.
She is weeping tears of blood again. But so, too, is Sasha. Before long, she realizes that there are more of them - five, all told, who weep. They are on one side of the line. Some stand in the middle, and far more than Sasha's side stand opposite.
A monstrous, black, glacial creature, inside and around the body of a pale Malkavian - many of the Sabbat, a few of the Kindred who are too close to their beasts and more who have accepted It altogether. They feel another pull entirely. And now, she knows.
This is right. I may be destroyed, I may be a sacrifice, but this is right. What I have done - I have faith that I have done as well as I can.
She doesn’t watch much. She stands just in front of Sasha, feeling her blood boil though she is pulled towards the woman, and takes blows without retaliation. She is weeping still, and can feel the blood leaving her in a slow but steady stream. She is not the only one. Marco stands, stoic as ever, Tiana is poised but perhaps uncertain and neither of them weep - and Celestine, as well, right behind Sasha to shield her from the claws of the roiling black beasts. Others, too, that she does not know. And Maxwell, the Gangrel who loved Alexandra's pallea, he stands in front of them all.
Until Sasha steps forward and wraps her arms around him, and he, too, bursts into flame. Everyone can see it now, in the end - redeemed. Mortal, and redeemed, before he is dust. Then another tug, and another step towards the woman, who falls to her knees when Celestine, Marco and Tiana collapse.
Skarrin? Is that - but he has no chord! It's - that’s...Skarrin.
The three astral bodies join the dead King of Harpies to fight the Beast - but Sasha needed Celestine. Carlotta takes her place with only a twinge of irony to tweak her memory at the exchange of places before she looks down at the woman.
Sasha is half dead. More than that. Blood is pouring out of her eyes, her finger nails, it’s covering her shirt. She will not last much longer - and the Beast is getting stronger.
Go on, Alex. It’s a double edged sword. Use it - it will only cut you, not her. This is right. You've done the best you could.
One moment - she sends reassurance across the mental link and wishes she had time for more. If she is meant for more than this, then she will have more time, afterwards - now, there isn’t any. Sasha slumps forward, and Carlotta kneels to wrap her arms around the little woman.
She, too, bursts into flame. She has never felt such a blessed peace.