After the war, what does a soldier become?

None of this was a good idea. Or so Carrington would remind himself in the days to come. Right now he couldn’t bear to think of anything that involved being alone. Not when he’d found someone who knew him. Someone who cared for him. Because what were the chances of that? In a place like this? Carrington was entirely too drunk to work the odds. To do anything but plead with Blair not to leave him alone to drown. 

He leaned heavily against her, his relief palpable in the way he gripped her so tightly as they moved upstairs. Like she would slip away if he let go. He mumbled in response to her question, blinking slowly as he watched her untie his boots. A wave of dejavu washed over him - this wasn’t the first time they’d been in this situation, though it had admittedly been a long time - and he didn’t protest as his jacket and shirt were soon gone. It was cooler up here, in the dark, and it felt good against his alcohol-flushed skin. He was a mass of bruises from where his ribs had been busted up on entry. Scrapes and cuts and old scars littered his body, over and under the tattoos inked onto his skin. There were even a few stitches in the recently obtained gash on his lower leg. 

Somehow he managed to get his jeans off, and slid beneath the covers in just his boxer-briefs. He heard Blair moving around in the hazy distance, and felt the bed shift as she finally settled next to him. The touch to his shoulder had him turning his head to look at her. It was such a simple thing, to be touched with kindness. With gentleness. Carrington had to close his eyes as memories of the last time he’d been touched that way flashed through his mind. 

“No. I’m not.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever be good again. Her teasing did win her the ghost of a smile, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Cheeky.” A slightly weighted pause hung in the air for a moment. Then the pull of Blair’s familiar presence was too much for Carrington in his drunken, wrecked state. He rolled heavily towards her, folding his arm around her and burying his face in her shoulder. Hot tears ran down his cheeks, but he never made a sound other than the occasional stutter of his breath, muffled against her skin. 

Blair buried herself under the softness of the duvet, the comfortable sweatshirt material a blessing to her aching bones. She could only imagine what it felt like to Cari. His body was a battleground, fresh and old scars and ink telling a story on his skin, but it was one Blair couldn't understand. Not yet. Maybe one day, if he didn't hate her tomorrow, they would talk about it.

She felt like an idiot for the question. No, he wasn't okay. Of course he wasn't okay, but she'd meant was he okay with this, the two of them lying there. It was both familiar and foreign all at once. Blair draped her arms around him as he buried his head in her shoulder, closing her eyes and just holding him. She could feel both the emotional and physical weight of him. He just needed someone right now, and that someone was her.

"Try to sleep," she whispered, her fingers absentmindedly stroking his hair with comforting familiarity. It was easier said than done, she knew, but with the amount of exhausted he was, it would probably happen sooner than he bargained for. Blair simply lay there, eyes closed, breathing rhythmic, waiting for sleep to take her.

The corner of Darcy’s mouth quirked up in a crooked smile. It would be nice to have someone not to be a big talker with. She missed her family like a dull ache, always there just on the edge of her mind. Darcy missed her cousin most of all. She tried her best not to think too much about that though. 

Her smile faded when Blair clarified that Darcy didn’t need to do the whole polite bit with her. Darcy appreciated the honesty and wished she could properly return it. She sighed and gave as much as she felt she could. “I just,” she paused, “Got myself into a bit of trouble with some folks and I’m pretty sure when they come out of the woods they’ll hurt anyone remotely close to me.” 

She glanced over at Blair, “So I want to, but I also don’t want anyone else to get hurt because of me.” A tiredness crept into her voice that she didn’t even notice. The constant running and moving, even before her transformation, had exhausted her. Without her family to lean on she was left trying to keep herself upright. 

Blair had developed a way of reading people over the years. You kind of had to when your life depended on knowing whether someone was out to get you or not. She still needed that instinct in Ashbourne too, except now in a different way. She wasn't the hunter any more. She could be the hunted. This Darcy person seemed to know how to relate to that, and Blair gave her a sad smile and a nod that said 'same'.

"Supernaturals have all got their enemies I guess." She should know. She used to be that enemy. "And I've been in plenty of trouble too. I can defend myself." Blair lightly knocked on the flyers she had just pinned up about the martial arts training she offered at the gym. "Even before I got turned, I knew how to handle myself. Don't worry about me. I'm a big girl."

And there it was. She had just come out with it. Before I got turned. There couldn't be any doubt now. If Darcy wanted to put a stake through her heart, well, Blair would just have to put those skills to the test, but she doubted that was the case. The kid seemed scared, not dangerous.

Carrington merely grunted at Blair’s question. He didn’t know exactly how many days it had been, but he’d spent most of them like this, yes. He’d been on his way to never having to worry about anything ever again, and ended up here instead. In a bloody town full of monsters. And then to learn that he couldn’t even do his fucking job? Let alone escape? Well, that had been the icing on the goddamn cake, hadn’t it? So drunk was the best option, since death apparently wasn’t one.

“God’s not here… God’s not anywhere…” The words were mumbled, and Carrington didn’t say much else after that. His ragged mind told him that at least he had Blair. At least if she was trapped here too, he wouldn’t have to do this alone. Even though he had no idea what he was supposed to do at all. 

He latched onto her hand when she squeezed his in return. It had been… so long… since he’d been in the same room as anyone who’d ever cared for him. Anyone who ever even knew him. So that small connection was something Carrington held onto. He leaned over, a bit too heavy to carry his own weight at such an angle, and let his forehead press to their joined hands. Six months. Six months, and so much had happened. Blair had  no idea. Or maybe… maybe she did. 

“Stay?” He closed his eyes and tried to make the room stop spinning again. “Please stay…” 

Blair squeezed her heavy eyes closed in a vain attempt to stop the tears from falling. The conflicting emotions in her mixed with the exhaustion and the odd relief of suddenly having Carrington with her was overwhelming. He'd always been a bit cynical and a bit closed off, a lot like her. Maybe that was why they had made a good match.

Stay, he said, the desparation in his voice bordering on begging. He was emotionally wrought, perhaps even more so than her. It gave them something else in common, even with all the things that now separated them. Blair sighed. It wasn't a good idea. Eventually, the sun would come up, and everything would change.

Maybe in the moment though, they both just needed this. "Okay," she said, helping him up from the table. "Come on." She carried him up the stairs to her bedroom. The shutters were closed and dark curtains covered the window. This was how she'd have to live until she could manage to get a daylight ring. "Still with me?" she asked, sitting him on the bed and helping him off with his shoes, jacket and shirt. The pants she was gonna let him take care of himself. "Lie down," she told him. "I'll be back."

Darcy had shut off the part of her brain that scanned for the supernatural. Especially in a town like this it was the only way to keep her sanity. Besides her self-righteousness felt hollow now. She still had a feeling or two about folks she met, but refused to acknowledge them. 

The corner of her mouth lifted in a smile. “Yeah, none of us were big talkers either,” Darcy replied. In fact, she had learned young to be careful with her words. She’d gotten herself into trouble more than once by asking the wrong questions. The only person in the whole extended family who talked about how anyone felt apparently had been her mother and Darcy had been told more than once that was what killed her in the end. 

Darcy shook her head at the woman’s question. She didn’t yet have a job or place to live or much of anything aside from the pack on her back. Briefly, her expression lit up at the offer of a training partner. It’d be nice to have someone to spar with again. It faded quickly though as Darcy realized what a bad idea that was. For one, anyone even remotely a friend of hers would be in danger when her uncle and cousin finally caught up to her. For another, she didn’t fully yet understand her new werewolf strength and would be likely to hurt someone else. Although Darcy had her suspicions that the woman next to her wasn’t entirely human either. “Thanks, but I’m not sure that would be a good idea,” she replied, “I wouldn’t want to impose.” 

Moving from place to place, not going to high school and doing most of her schooling in the back seat of a Dodge truck tended not to make for the best social graces. Blair had never been very good at making friends who lasted more than a few weeks. You just ended up lying to them and going out of town every weekend hunting monsters. By the time she'd 'graduated', if you could call it that, she was out looking for her next hunt most of the week too. Lilian and the other hunters were the only people she could really be herself with.

"Great. Then I guess we'll have to be not-big-talkers together." She was still trying to figure out how much was too much talking and how much was too little. Sometimes she overdid it in trying to compensate. For her part, Darcy seemed pretty awkward and withdrawn too. There was something alluring about a friend who didn't need to fill the silence all the time.

"It's okay if you don't want to. I'll be fine," she said with a shrug. Blair wasn't exactly going to force someone to hang out with her. She didn't have the patience for it. "But don't do that forced polite stuff about not wanting to impose, okay? I invited you. That means it's not an imposition." Her words were a bit blunt maybe, but not too harsh or rude. At least she thought so. How Darcy interpreted them might've been different. "We're all stuck here, right? Might as well try and make the best of it before something comes out of the woods to kill us all."

Vomiting up his toenails had made Carrington’s head throb like mad, but it had also made the swimming sickness abate just a bit. It didn’t make him any less drunk, but he was able to curb the worst of things for just a moment through sheer force of will. 

“Don’t have one,” he told her. “Just here… three days? Four? ‘M not sure.” He leaned forwards, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes hard enough to see stars. If this was Blair, and not some fever dream, then at least… at least he wasn’t alone anymore. At least his grief and his pain could be shared by someone else, as selfish as Carrington knew that was. But he didn’t show weakness. He didn’t show fear. Not to anyone. But Blair… Blair had known him since they were children. She’d seen as much of him as anyone, perhaps even more than Marie- 

The thought of his wife - his beautiful, kind, patient wife… and their son… - nearly broke him down again. Carrington sucked in a shuddering breath, followed by an angry growling sound that he’d let himself get so drunk that he could barely function. The heat in Blair’s voice was welcome. It gave him something to latch onto. Something hard, grounded. Something real. He pressed his hands harder against his eyes, balling them into tight fists. He finally dropped them away when it became too painful. Glancing aside, he looked at Blair through a blurry haze of alcohol and grief as she spoke. Still too drunk to see her for what she’d become, Carrington could only hold her face in his memory for now. As something good. Something from the outside world.

A prison, she said. Trapped. That seemed to be the running theme. But… why? To what end? God, what a mess. “How long? How long’ve… you been here?” He hadn’t seen her in quite awhile. Ages it seemed. Though his sense of time was warped recently. The offer to stay on her couch was appreciated, even if it struck Carrington as something almost too eerily familiar in an unfamiliar place. He stretched one long arm slowly across the table towards her, reaching for her hand. “I missed you, B.” There was a ‘thank you’ in there too. 

"You've just been wandering around town like this for three or four days?" That was just so typically Carrington. Too proud to try and talk to anyone, to check in at the Hub, to do anything but stroll into a bar and get black-out drunk and god only knew what else. "For God sake, Cari," she huffed with a deflated sigh. "Least you're here now."

There weren't any words to describe how much of a mess he was. She could tell he was trying to sober up, to find his way through the dizzy blur that had been his last seventy-two hours. Blair was both relieved he was here and terrified all at once. She'd known him almost all her life, after all. She knew better than anyone what Carrington did to people like her.

And yet there he was, even in his addled state, reaching over to her and telling her that he missed her. She latched onto that, trying to let the hope drown out the fear. "I missed you too," she answered, reaching back and wrapping her fingers tightly around his, giving them a little squeeze. "It's been six months. A lot's happened. But I'll tell you more when you've had some rest, okay?" Please don’t hate me tomorrow, she hoped.

BLOODLINE: PROELIATOR

“Proeliator was once built on great warriors and military minds; now, the clan is built on angry rebels and those who would buck the dominant authority.  Once regarded as a high clan and noble line of warrior scholars, the Proeliator Bloodline have tarnished their reputation, action by action. Through a litany of historical events of rebellion and Vampiric Revolts, they have fallen farther and farther from their former glory.”

Lil looked back at her sister trying to form words to explain what she had felt. Part of her thought if she closed her eyes and opened them really quickly that Blair would be gone, and that thought scared her more than anything else.

At Blairs words Lil tried to laugh, but it came out more of a choking sound than anything else. She shook her head and when Blair put down her hands she wiped at her eyes trying to not be a baby. I She wanted to understand what had happened as she tried to count the months in her head. 

It had been more than six, she was sure of it. Time seemed to blur together, but she knew it had to be more - and she almost automatically followed Blair. It was a natural reaction for her, knowing that while she tried to process everything Blair would keep them safe. It was something Lil had been so used to, that when Blair was suddenly gone it made her always on edge. 

Although it might have been a bad idea for her not to be focused on her surroundings as she now was counting down the months and realizing it didn’t add up. Lil had waited at least a year, she was sure of it. Did that mean that Blair had left? Lil had always assumed that something had to have taken her away, but what if Blair had just wanted to go on without her. Maybe she’d done it for awhile and regretted it just to get trapped here. This seemed to be confirmed when Blair wanted her to sit down, like she had to deliver bad news. 

“I - I just want to say if I did anything,” Lil said a fear she’d been putting down springing out as she sat down. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” 

She didn’t know how else to say it. “I’m not mad that you left, I just needed to make sure you were okay.”

Blair might have only been a couple of years older than her sister, but in so many ways she felt like a parent. Her dad had been around, sure, but there had been so many times the two of them had been left at home or in some cabin or motel room where Blair had to take care of Lil until he came back. Lilian was the other half of her soul. There was no way she would have left her if she'd felt she had any other choice.

The crying broke her. She hated crying. Growing up with a bunch of tough just-get-the-job-done hunters didn't exactly lead to being emotionally healthy. She was always afraid someone would find a way to exploit her weaknesses. The only person she never had to worry about that with was Lil. "Stop that," she said softly, shaking her head and wrapping Lil up in her arms. "You did nothing wrong." Blair was the one who was wrong.

"Listen, okay?" She put her hands on Lil's shoulders, straightening up so they could look into each other's eyes. "Dad's..." She wanted to say 'alive', but that wasn't strictly true. "God, there's so much to tell you. Please don't freak out. He turned. He's a vampire." The words practically trembled out of her mouth then fell all at once. Like pulling a band-aid off a wound. "He turned me, Lil, and he wanted to turn you but I made him promise... I swore I'd go with him and help him but only if he left you alone."

Carrington’s head was still spinning, and his stomach too. Though there was nothing left for him to throw up, the nausea made him groan. The feeling of not being in control of his body was one he had always hated, though Carrington had no one to blame but himself for his current state. 

“Why?” Carrington let the cloth be put into his hand. He let it be guided to press against his clammy skin. Held there. He didn’t open his eyes or lift his head. Why should he? Though Blair’s voice was still there. Still real. Wasn’t it? “Yours? Why’re…” Carrington swallowed thickly, pausing until the nausea settled again. “Ashbourne…” He pressed the cloth over his eyes, frowning deeply. “… fuck’s happening?”

Why? Blair twisted her face with confusion. "Uh... because I don't know where your place is...?" He was so confused, and he was way too drunk to take on board anything she was saying. Blair took a breath, trying to find her words. Usually, she could talk to Carrington about just about anything, but this grief-ridden, drunken mess.

"Ashbourne. It's... I don't know! Some weird, cursed supernatural prison, Cari." Blair almost snapped at him, but did her best to reel in her frustration. If his wife wasn't here, and his kid wasn't here, she had a sickening feeling his state of mind had something to do with them. "We're stuck, okay? You can go to The Hub tomorrow and they'll explain everything, but for now... You... you just gotta get sober, okay?" She rubbed her temple, drinking her own glass of icy water, as if it would somehow make things better.

"You can sleep here but, for the love of God, please don't throw up on my couch." She could only imagne the kind of havok it would wreak on her enhanced senses.

It was a habit of Fleur’s to keep an eye on the vampires that came (and possibly disappeared) inside of Ashbourne’s limits. She liked to be familiar with those around, know who was a believer and who was a heretic. Of course, the latter had been more difficult in the last two and a half months after the Sanguinem Aeternam had been burnt down by a mad man. Answers were running dry as to who had done it which only left her feeling more and more unsettled with each day that passed. The Council was useless – careless. She wanted answers that she wasn’t sure she could wait for much longer.

“You are an unfamiliar face.” And a pretty one. Given that this place catered primarily to vampires and she did not wreak of humanity, it was an easy assumption to make. “Can I get you a drink? Fleur Chenery.” She introduced herself.

Blair had been curious about the vampire bars since her arrival. When she was still a hunter, they had been a distasteful place that filled her with intense disgust and discomfort. Fighting that impulse was like being scared of heights and riding the elevator up the Empire State Building. She must have been looking lost as a little sheep when the stranger spoke to her, and just as vulnerable too, but she put on her best face, giving a nod. "That's because I am," she said with a neutral shrug.

The woman was attractive. Almost unreasonably so. She carried herself with a class and allure that drew her in. "Blair," she said, introducing herself. "Sure, a drink would be great." How to phrase this without sounding like an absolute idiot? "What's good here? It's my first time." It sounded better than 'I don't even know what they serve'.