#sv; flashbacks

     the bustle of agents in hallways embodies the headquarters as a child of no more than three and a half weaves around legs and slides in her socks around corners. it’s an adventure in of itself which features stumbles along the way as she falls and picks herself back up, all the while dodging an agent who had volunteered to watch her while her father left on mission. she makes a game of it, imagining herself as one of the tall people that always surrounded her, off saving the world. every stumble is a battle wound and turn of corner is a dodge of some kind of monster like the ones she makes her father check for in the closet every night at tuck-in time. a flash of dark hair around a corner is seen by one agent a while later, someone calling to another that they’d seen her go ‘this way’ or ‘that way’ and hadn’t stopped her because they’d figured she was with another of the agents which had been in the hallway. they could all be like a family at times, but a child running around, that.. even after all this time in, still took getting used to; georgie learning to run had put them all on their toes. 

     light hues observe her father’s sword, hand running over cool metal as elisabet waves it through the air and nearly spins herself into a tree from the weight of the object. her mother had expressed an insistence of her to not learn swordplay whereas, despite the girl’s desires to be a healer, she had determined she the opposite. their world was not a kind one-- at least not always-- and elisabet was no stranger to the reality of raids and pillaging between villages and did not want to rely on someone else to protect her. no, she would learn and defend herself and anyone else who might not be able. another attempt, flawed stance causing the heavy sword to twist out of her hands and drop the ground with a thump that covers the arrival of her father.

“I don’t think you understand, Jer.  There’s going to be five clowns at Sue’s party! Five! We’re all going to die if we go.” This is what happens when you and your brother think they are grown up enough to watch scary movies. 

     ?????? Confusion laces the eight year old's features, an eyebrow raising in response to the string of words her grandfather spoke. It was Greek to her, though, suddenly, Elena begins to worry he expects her to learn that too. Not that she was against it, at least she didn’t think she was, but the child could only do so much and her new school already had her taking Latin. Latin! She wasn’t even due to start taking a language until fourth grade in Mystic Falls! And she was just a second grader!

     “I know that Shakespeare is ‘posed to be a famous guy but-- I have no idea what you just said.” A frown creases Elena’s lips, frustration etching it’s way into her eyes. She didn’t like not understanding something. “Can we watch Flipper on tv instead?” Elena releases a breath. “I-- um, I promise we can try to read the Shakes guy later?” She was bargaining, she just hoped it worked. 

          “You know, just because I have these on, that doesn’t mean           I can’t hear you right?” Elena questions, eyes drifting open           as she gives her granduncle a quizzical look. 

there's an eerie sort of mist in the air, water sprung up from the canals mixing with skyward grayness. fog rolls through, the mixing of atmosphere conditions melding dream into reality. there'd been fog in her nightmares too. water and blood, a myriad of memories creating a network of chaos in her sleepy mind. it was sort of like the waterways here, she thinks. this city she's visited so many times now, so much more as a young adult than she'd been allowed as a child. was it strange that it felt more like a kind of home than the house her grandparents held when alive? that somewhere with so much less felt safer than halls filled with too much she'd spend her youth? funny how even when ariadne had gone to the states, it was memories of this place which so often colored her thoughts. or maybe it was merely the words of a boy come alive upon the page. letters filled with secrets they could only share with one another.

strange still, that such a place had never been her home, had only been a place visited, glimpses seen with so much hidden behind a veil. cities didn't make a home, she reminds herself. it was the people. and the people here, or at least the ones whom mattered really, she'd felt safe with. maybe that was an odd sort of thing too. she wasn't ignorant of the things she didn't see. but she still remembers the look upon polly's face when she'd all of twelve years-old and hair in pig-tails managed to navigate the train stations and traveled two hours without telling a soul that was actually in a thousand miles of england what she was doing. or well, it was a rare bit of rebellion upon her part and technically speaking she'd texted her father. told him. merely hadn't informed her grandparents who'd said they wouldn't be taking her there to see her friend. (they never did, only her father did or sometimes some of uncle nik's friends when they were on this side of the pond.) so the girl had taken it upon herself, determination upon her features. she'd packed her back pack for the weekend. somehow thought it was the most logical thing in the world.

sometimes she can't believe she'd done that, yet was it any stranger than the fact she'd once given arthur an accidental black eye? still, ariadne remembers the mixture of worry and relief upon polly's face and the chastising about how many things could have happened along her way. she didn't know back then, maybe in a way, didn't fully allow herself to accept how true such a reality could be even now as a college student. but she felt safe here, now upon this weekend visit. she'd been coming there more often these days. more often than she had even when she'd first moved. it'd been months since tommy's mum and ariadne was still juggling school yet she'd always been adaptable and resourceful.

didn't her train escapade show that at least?

regardless, none of that was here nor there in this moment, dark hues watching fog roll over the nearby canal and at an early morning hour. the sound of the water laps against stone, one of the few sounds on this weekend morning when night melded into day. she'd gotten in from her train late the evening before, it organized for her to say there until she'd have to go back to classes on monday. she'd already done her assignments in advance, hadn't even bothered to bring her laptop. yet her night's sleep had been restless and filled with shifting memories of things she'd once spoken of in letters. she'd been restless awhile when it came to sleep. perhaps it was the stirring of memories her friend's mother's death brought forth for her, then again, perhaps it was a bit of everything.

'but soft, what light through yonder window breaks? it is the east, and juliet is the sun.'

words upon a bloodied page; centuries old parchment torn around the edges by shattered glass against a crimson soaked rug. screams in the distance, a fox calling into the veil between night and day. crystalline shards scatter the entranceway of the old english home, the chosen dwelling of a vampire who'd chosen to bask in the light of humanity. the home is grand by average standards and yet nothing of what would be expected of it's owners' status. it's warm, colored ascents and trinkets of his homeland sprinkled throughout it's corners. a woman's coat knocked off a rack lays upon the ground, muddied footprints stomped into it. the scent of fresh death is thick, swirling in the too silent air. splintered wood lays further inside, a bannister broken. the wall is busted inward as if someone had been thrown into it with unnatural force. crimson rivers leak, seeping, dripping across shelves and artifacts and a singular child's toy at the intersection of the foyer.

the wind from the open door catches, swirls through the ghostly halls. it moves passed the body of a woman upon the ground, her hand laid over the child's toy and her neck ripped out with a feral sort of vengeance. her scent mixes with another, a few meters further. a man bloodied, battered, dead. another upon the turn. and one more, another man, each destroyed as if their right to exist, even in death, had been revoked by one or all of the gods. the breeze proceeds upon it's odyssey, swirling and shifting, scents mingling as it travels toward the shattered window in the furthest room-- it's escape of the this horrorscape. the sound of pages pierce the early hours, a ghost in a tomb which once was a home. pages move, blood drops winkling the pages of a book among dozens scattered across the room.

'a glooming peace this morning with it brings; the sun, for sorrow, will not show his head: go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; some shall be pardon'd, and some punished: for never was a story of more woe than this of juliet and her romeo.'

mehmed's body lays upon the ground, half covering books and broken glass, his ancient body appearing such for the first time as it desiccated, and yet in the stillness he almost appeared asleep if naught for the blood. there was so much blood. dry and wet, covering her in too many places, tears upon her clothes from a struggle and crimson smeared across her face where ariadne had allowed her newly formed fangs to tear into flesh. there was a dull pain in her jaw she was beginning to feel, the dark frenzy of violence and shock melding into the brief flickers of awareness in the red streaks beginning to from across an increasingly turbulent sky, shrouding the brightness of sun in shadows.

a toddler cries out from a closet with a stark suddenness, their mother having little memory of the voices she had risen to, moving toward the child to take her, only the blind rage she had felt. the pain. the turmoil. the primal need of a mother, and of a lover as mehmed's lifeless eyes looked upon her. she doesn't remember the struggle, or the footfalls, or the crashes. she doesn't remember tearing into the flesh of the first threat as the others scattered. she doesn't remember grabbing alara and putting her into the closet, ariadne's own blood and the man's smearing across the child's onesie. she doesn't remember hunting the others down through the house. she doesn't remember returning. she doesn't remember holding mehmed or her refusal to open the closet door out of fear. fear of what she was. fear of the memory of her own mother who had been so close to harming her own daughter-- the madness that had over taken her. (but ariadne was stronger than her mother, she always had been. and such had been the saving grace, if there could be one of the night.)

she doesn't remember, until the approaching footfalls break the hold her shock has over her and she remembers everything all at once. blood. there was so much blood. she could feel it, smell it, crave it, fear it. her face, she can feel the pain in her gums. she can feel the veins in her face. she can sense everything, too much. she needs to go to her daughter. can she? his body's at her knees.. mehmed... mehmed... the crunch of glass. osman. osman killed a member of their order. they'd said that. mehmed had talked about it. worried it'd shift the tides-- bring too much exposure. it wouldn't matter if how many resources they had as one of the great families... she remembers now. she remembers.

"you did this!" she moves in a blur, both hitting the wall and knocking what little remained to the ground. alara cries again because of the sound and ariadne's grip tightens but she doesn't attack as if she's warring with herself and yet such a battle proves she already maintains more control than what should be expected. even if it's precarious. her grip loosens, turns into shoving, into hitting his chest until she's falling under the weight of everything that's too much. she can see the bodies, the killers, the murderers in the corridor.

would they have come one day, either way?

"he's gone. he's dead. they murdered him. and... i killed them."

there had been little active work on this particular day at the centre in respect to criminal cases. no scenes or post mortems she was required to attend. doctor kalkan had consulted, earlier in the day, with the archeology department of the university. they often chose ariadne over other forensic pathologists when they sought consults from her department and she suspected such held more to do with the name kalkan than any ulterior motives or slight upon someone else's professional abilities. doctor harkness was just as skilled, perhaps more so at this stage given he'd already held placement at the centre before her. she'd worked under him during her internship before she'd been offered the full position along side him. however, it was no secret to the university that ariadne held some archeological experience even if not in an official academic respect. she'd spent long periods when she was young at dig sites with her parents (before they'd grown more distant in her life) and as she'd grown spent summers helping her uncle. further, ariadne never minded being pulled away from one area to consult another provided there was a qualified person to send to the scene in her stead.