#jcdasbit

“Well aren’t you fond of lurking in the dark spaces of this city.”

Not that she is one to talk; seated on the pillar of a tall stone wall as she overlooked the street many had since fled from. Fingers curled over the edge between where her legs sat parted; the black dress she wore draped down the surface of the pillar like a inky waterfall. Modestly covered in a single sheet of fabric from throat to feet, save for the cut out that revealed the entirety of her back. Death itself would be jealous - yet here the scrawny woman sat, on top of a end-cap of a wall.

miscellaneous angst starters / accepting ! 

            ❝ MR. McCULLUM. ❞  Lady Ashbury feigns a cute gasp, her chin lowering & her eyes averting his. So coyly she might act the part of a proper mistress in the wake of his prosaic behaviour, risks notwithstanding. Lithe fingers dance across the top of her sketchbook, thumb hooking underneath the cover once it arrives at the edge. Certainly he didn’t know ! The Guard of Priwen had been cold on her trail for decades. The ever-elusive Lady Blackwood was no more, & in her shadow had arisen a new woman, benefactor of Pembroke, kind-hearted –  repenting.  

         Still, her heart thrums at an unnatural frequency for one who had been so comfortable for so long. She doesn’t know what she might do next, except raise her gaze to his own. Elisabeth’s every instinct screamed at her to turn heel now. It is by extraordinary feat that she might offer instead the likeness of honey-sweet words, accompanied by a gentle, shy smile. 

          Talk to one man.  Talk to another.  Go along a chain, constantly getting another terrified wannabe soldier that’s too reluctant to give him much to go on.  Lester, of course, curated an image to be intimidating - he looks military.  In a post-war world, in a land where Germans were the enemy, being a German in what almost looks like a uniform is a bit rough.  Gets people going.  But that’s the point (and he was like this before the war, and, well, he’s not changing the image just for these dipshits).  Still, the people of this little militia really piss him off at times; they don’t fully seem to realize that he’s one of the main contributors to what they do.  Or maybe they just don’t care because of the accent.

          Maybe - maybe at this point he should just give up in this little quest.  They can talk business later.  Except, it’s not really even business that he seeks his cohort out for, if he is honest with himself (which he rarely is in cases such as this).  Frankly, he wants an excuse to talk to McCullum.  Problem is that they’re not really on that close a basis; they’re friendly, talk to each other, spar a bit, but they’re not to the point of hey, I vaguely missed your presence because I have no other friends, how are you?

          FINALLY, Lester seems to reach the end of this long line of clues in this goddamn scavenger hunt.  In the middle of the night, McCullum went off by himself to some forgotten corner of London, where houses lay abandoned.  Try to stake a few skals on his own.  Safe?  Not really.  Something Lester would also do?  Probably.  

          It’s the break of dawn when Lester gets to the area.  He’s certain he’ll have to clamber through houses and crunch a few vampire heads under his boot along the way in order to find McCullum.  Maybe they can have some witty banter while whacking a few together (skals, that is, skals).  Lester ends up not having to do that much work at all.  Instead, McCullum is standing in front of a house, sidling the walls of it, and looking quite pensively at the ground.  Lester isn’t really sure why - the only thing there is a shadow.  The reasoning for the trapped body language becomes abundantly clear, however, when he seems to give up; he steps past the border that is the end of the shadow, and proceeds to FRY.

          Oh.

          Ooooooooooooooh.

          There are a few ways one could react to this.  Let him burn.  Eat some popcorn and watch, maybe.  Point and laugh at the irony.  Shoot him?  Lester goes with immediate gut instinct:  dash straight for him.  

          “MCCULLUM!”

          The next few moments go by very fast.  Practically tackle the burning man; throw him over shoulder; beeline for a house; shout German curses; shut the door; plop him on the floor with his back resting on the wall; drop to a knee; bewilderment, fear, anxiety; remembering vampires don’t actually die from the sunlight; and, last, judgement.

God I hate it when ppl act like forgetfulness is Purposeful and not ... a Symptom Of Illness Just Like Every Other Mildly Inconvenient Thing About Mentally Ill Ppl!! I’m gonna fight whoever said it to u bc you’re still wonderful & dont deserve to be made to feel like this over a genuine mistake ♥️

its like yeah i ABSOLUTELY PURPOSEFULLY forgot to do this JUST TO ANNOY YOU

               HE’S BEEN FOOLISH to allow this to persist as long as it did, he should have sought out McCullum the moment he learned the truth about King Arthur. It’s the only explanation now— the enhanced strength during their battle, the endurance gifted to him by a few measly drops of blood. Jonathan would have suspected it from the start if the entire fate of London wasn’t thrust into his responsibilities soon after. 

               Jonathan almost thought to turn the vampire hunter when he bested him at the hospital, but it was a desire fueled by indignation and Edgar’s impending betrayal. In the end, he couldn’t even bare to afflict his dying friend with this curse. Those who seek unlife willingly seek something they do not— cannot, understand. Only the best of men refuse to be warped by the concept of eternity; and even if McCullum is a hunter, Jonathan cannot rightly declare his intentions incorruptible. 

     ❝ McCullum, I need to talk to you! ❞ He’d tracked the other man all the way to Whitechapel, but his hideout is unnervingly empty of Priwen agents. ❝ It’s about King Arthur’s blood... It’s not what you think. You could be putting yourself at risk! ❞