--[closed!] it's a long way down when all the knots we've tied have come undone

[thebooksaysso]

Characters: thebooksaysso & apyrostrategy
Setting/Location: Her room
Date & Time: Day 55, late afternoon-ish?
Warnings: None.
Summary: An emotional wreck of a witch needs company, and Zhou Yu is more than happy to provide.

Comments

[apyrostrategy]

Zhou Yu hadn't lied when he had said that he worried for Anathema. The girl was not really an ally, not even a friend, hardly more than an acquaintance as it were - and he had to admit that what she had told him about magic worried him more than he let on. And still... she had been nothing but helpful for all his stay, had provided him with all the information he had needed upon his arrival, and had proven herself to be more intriguing company to him than most of the caravan's passengers. And what was more, even with her involvement in powers he would rather not think about, there was something like an inherent goodness about her, a genuineness of her beliefs that he found admirable. He didn't like knowing she was in such a state, and even if he couldn't really help her, it seemed time to meet her face to face for the first time after their brief encounter as werewolf and vampire

[thebooksaysso]

He head snapped up at the knock, and she was half a beat away from telling whoever was on the other side to bugger off. Cassandra, like herself, just walked in, and Anathema couldn't bring herself to be in the mood to deal with anyone else at the moment. The voice that followed, however, had the words die in her throat. That was....he came after all?

"You...." The smallest twinge of annoyance surfaced again; he shouldn't have been there, and really shouldn't have been concerned at all.

But he was.

"I don't care." She didn't know when Cassandra would be returning, and she should probably let her know she let someone else by, shouldn't she? But it wasn't as if he was going to be staying for long. "It's unlocked."

[apyrostrategy]

The approval was enough, even if it was wrapped in irritation. He followed the invitation and entered, casting a long glance at the girl after he closed the door behind him. She really wasn't looking good, eyes red from crying and all. It was interesting how vaguely he recognised her; she gave him a sense of someone familiar, but at the same time, now that his perspective was not distorted by vampiric senses any more, and that she was fully human again, she seemed like a completely new person. Despite her foreign looks and the obvious traces of crying, she was pretty. The eerie contrast between her dark hair and light skin gave her something interesting.

He smiled faintly and apologetic, but kept a respectful distance of about a metre to her. As she didn't seem to change her mind so quickly and decide to kick him out, he leaned against the wall and looked at her.

"I thought you were troubled," he explained calmly, "but now I find you and see that it is worse than expected. What happened? What brought this on?"

[thebooksaysso]

And Anathema herself had almost been expecting the smell of death to enter the room with him, unreasonable a thought as it was. He'd been cured with her, she had to remember, they weren't on opposite ends of a bloodthirsty free for all any longer. It did nothing to take away from the critical look she gave him as he walked in, however; nice enough as he'd been in the past, she still watched him with a tired wariness.

Trying to fix on his aura got her nowhere, her concentration already shot as it was. Anathema wiped away at the new tears that had gathered in the process, tried to dry her face, anything to look just a little more presentable and not so much like a wreck. And when that didn't seem work she just looked away altogether.

"I don't know." That time it came out as little more than a shaky growl, though the anger was quickly lost as another sob bubbled up in her. "Everybody needs to stop asking that, I don't know."