catherine. it's like a name and a title in one..

“Hah, sympathy, like we truly need it when we tell the truth,” Valentin said with a little laugh. “Me with a beard? You are off your bird-I won’t look right with a beard.”

“I think everyone has the ability to look right with a beard, you might even like it. You could decorate it as Christmas as the strange flanneled children do.” She teased. “You two never tell the truth.”

“I think I can safely say, that I’ll be avoiding anything that puts me in my mother’s footsteps.” A possible Myra Hindley with an eye for butchering vampires for pleasure? Yeah… hard pass. Even if she was terrified of vampires, she could never see herself killing them for sport. Or killing anything. Hell, she didn’t even know if it was true, since Selene had lied about so much, but even the accusation was enough to make her want to keep her distance from her parents.

“Every child says that. Nearly every child follows in at least one path of footsteps their parents have left over the years but that’s the nice part of free will, you get to decide which ones.” Over the centuries she had taught many children who had issues with their parents, it wasn’t for her to try and fix them by any means unless that’s something they expressly asked for, but she could listen and play Devils Advocate when needed.

“She says dada and mama and that’s about it; not exactly enough to make some compelling case regarding how she feels about my lack of humanity.” Scout shrugged, ignoring the little tickle that played at his mind whenever Briar was brought up. “You’re finally speaking my language. What did you have in mind?”

“No, but she will remember. Children have better memories than many adults, just remember that.” She advised, finishing off her glass before stealing another and moving closer to Scout, to look up at him and see what was happening through his eyes. “Dealers choice, I’m just shotgun tonight.”

“Ah yes, our long lifespan must help with teaching historical events. No matter what historians say, when you’ve been there you truly know what happened.” Emmett chuckled lightly. When he heard things being told incorrectly he would politely add details and hope they trusted him. “Should I have become a professor I likely would do the same thing. Nothing can replace the feel of paper in your hands. Reading off of a page is much better than reading from a screen.”

“I like mucking with the books at every turn, they didn’t want to have a proper account going into print and they can suffer for it now when I refuse to use them and openly mock them.” She confirmed. “Plus the eye strain, it may be easier with the new-fangled blue lights but still, it does put pressure on the eyes with time.”

“Students? Do you teach here?” Astrid asked curiously. There was always something so noble who put everything aside and invested themselves in teaching the new generations. Centuries ago, it was supposed to be Astrid’s role, but now, she was never going to experience it. “Or is it a progeny thing?”

Nodding, Catherine flashed a small smile. “I have PhD's in the medical and historical fields but currently I am teaching the one through six hundred levels of European history and Women’s Studies. Sometimes I miss being a doctor though.” Even then, towards the end, she had shifted her focus from neurology to working with kids so going into teaching had been a natural progression. “Could be, I don’t delve too much into the psyche of it if I can avoid it. What do you do?” 

“You’re just so mean to me Catherine, why?” he pouted.

“Someone needs to be. You’d get old and lazy otherwise.” She smirked.

Mina’s eyes widened just a bit when she admitted that she was once a wolf. She couldn’t imagine not being a wolf anymore, or can she imagine living over a thousand years. “Did you…did you miss it? Being a wolf, I mean?” she asked slowly. She missed being a witch, missed making fire spark between her fingers as she danced to music. It made her feel free, even if she couldn’t control it.

“Wouldn’t you?” She asked, brow quirking. Of course she did, some part of her. It was what had connected her to her children, had been the first thing to make her feel strong instead of weak. Catherine owed them, she felt like she had anyway, for the longest time. Her maker had taught her otherwise, said that what they had done was wrong, that her feelings were wrong. She was still conflicted about it sometimes all these centuries later. About what she was truly meant to be. “Only sometimes.” She added. “It’s like an itch I can’t quite get rid of. Especially on a full moon. My body remembers what it thinks it’s supposed to be doing but it can’t do it, I miss it more as it was my connection to my children but it’s not who I am and not something I care for others to know.”

“Yeah well, I guess another Valentine’s Day will come and go without a date for me. But the world will keep turning. I have a customer, goodbye mom!” Gia hung up the phone and looked at it with a glare before shaking it violently in her hand from frustration. She wasn’t even in her shop. She was sitting in the cafe trying to enjoy her coffee, when her mother called. When she felt eyes on her she turned and blushed as she gave an apologetic smile. “I’m not crazy I promise. Or not yet anyway. I’m sure my mom is trying to get me there, though.”

“I can with exhaustive experience say that is among the many main jobs in a parent’s life should you have your own, you’ll do it too someday.” Keeping them alive was important but taking every waking opportunity to repay the child for all of the shit they put the parent through was truly a highlight of one’s life. 

“So, I just got word my ten year reunion is this year….” she sighed softly, the girl she was in high school a completely different person to the person she was now. “Can I just hide away from everyone I went to school with this year? I mean, what can we talk about, everything I did since high school has been gossiped about and well publicised so I don’t exactly have to tell them, right?” 

"Just lie dear, don’t tell them anything you don’t want to. Or tell them everything, doesn’t matter.” Catherine shrugged, not understanding what the big deal was. She also didn’t go to school until she was in her 800′s and there wasn’t a thing as reunions at that time. People would believe what they wanted, that was just life.

She nodded. “I used to be a witch that can do pyrokinesis, so I know how that feels.” she said, remembering the many times (and hiccups) her magic had gotten out of control and she’d put so many things on fire, and she was even close to developing a new power before she lost it and got turned into a vampire. “I was actually sad that I couldn’t put anything on fire anymore.”

“I was a wolf, before this,” Catherine admitted quietly. She never said it out loud, not really. She didn’t tell people if she could avoid it, mostly because she didn’t want to answer the questions or get dragged into wars by either side. Her family, her children, were all wolves and she was not anymore and that’s all that mattered. “My family was slaughtered by wolves and I was spared as a child and taken to live with them, eventually I became one of them and then over a thousand years ago I became something else.”

“She’s a baby. She can’t talk.” Scout shrugged. The baby was with Alex at the moment, and for the foreseeable future he thought, he wasn’t entirely sure, he hadn’t asked. “Doesn’t matter, she won’t remember.”

“Babies can speak, just not well and she probably knows what’s going on, knows it’s not quite you.” Catherine was mildly disappointed he would dismiss the little one so easily. “Well then, if she won’t remember then let’s get up to something that we won’t remember either.”

“A beautiful place.” Astrid smiled. She hadn’t been there for the past few decades, but every time she was there, it felt like nothing had changed. There was odd beauty to that country. “Minds? Who’s exactly on your to-do list in here?” She asked curiously. The town was small, she was bound to know a target or two.

“Currently? Scout. He’s in a rough place. Mostly my students otherwise, some of them have the potential to do great and terrible things, the rest will just be ordinary and that’s fine, but it’s the others that should be strengthened.” What was it they said, chaos is a ladder? She liked to have both sides of the coin in her pocket should things fuck up down the road.

“No, I think that I don’t want them. And if I do, there are other ways to have them. Adoption.” she added, shrugging a little. “There’s so many kids out there that need a home, I’d be happy to do that. Provide a home.” she knew that it was another option if she chose too, and it wasn’t like she didn’t have time anymore. “Trust me, it’s not so safe these days. And not knowing doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt just as much when you trigger. I lived a normal life, I still turned out like this.”

It actually hurt Catherine to see Emma so resigned to giving up on this, it sounded like it was something that was so important to her and having had it snatched from her was something she was struggling with. Giving the girl a solemn nod, Catherine understood she probably shouldn’t push it too much farther. “Adoption is a wonderful thing and it still feels the same. They would be lucky to have you. As for the triggering or turning or whatever happens, it’s part of supernatural life. It hurts, for us all, believe me. I've done it twice over.”

Fire. Oooh, she loved fire, fire big enough to make sure no one would know what happen. And yet when she thought about fire, it reminded her that she lost her fire magic, but she can still use matches, darn it. “It is easier to pass it off like that-I actually did that one time in Germany, three nights after I turned.” she mused as she remembered that night when she didn’t know how to feed or do anything properly.

“I don’t remember much of my early days but I do vaguely recall there was a lot of fire. Mostly started by me I think? Noah probably had a hand in it too though.” She started, trying to remember it. It was so long ago. “It’s just a good element all around, you can do so much with it, wicked and otherwise. Plus it symbolizes so many things and I like that.”

“And you don’t believe us? I’m crushed.”

“You and him both, should start a club. It might get you some sympathy. Maybe if you both grew proper beards, go a bit Santa and the world might think you cute as a daisy.”

“What is home for you?” Astrid asked the woman curiously. It was always fascinating to her, how attached people could get to a place they were born in. It was quiet the opposite to her, had always been; having been raised to move all the time, she had carried that training through the centuries.

“England.” She answered proudly. “I’ll go back when it’s time, but there are things I’d like to do here first, minds to still mold. People to kill. You know, the little things.” Some of them were larger things but she had some reason to believe there was information here about her family and that was something. It was the eternal search that kept her going.

“Ah, yes. I can only imagine how technology has changed the classroom. Namely, how the students having access  to phones and laptops has changed the classroom.” If Emmett were the one getting in front of a class to try and teach he likely would’ve been frustrated by students who cared more about what was on the screen than what was being taught. “But I do hope it also makes your job easier in ways as well. The grading, getting all of the assignments, some of that must be better.”

“Distractions are almost a minute by minute occurrence and they like to try and use it to disprove what they’re being told, even though I was there and have the first-hand experience.” She sighed, eyes rolling. “I hand grade actually, I prefer it. Half of the students have next to no penmanship which is fine if they’re going into technological fields but many other fields still require writing.”