‘Aiga E Tasi

“I think by the time I publish anything the world will have worked out a new way to damn my family name.” Especially if the ouroboros had their own way, which.. they were seemingly becoming closer to getting. “I’ll dedicate at least a chapter to you.” She smiled, finding the ease of being here a lot different to how she’d first arrived in the wake of new years. “No,” Said rather quickly as she shook her head, amusement clear on delicate features. “My being here has absolutely nothing to do with the bed and more to do with the man who let me in it.” A bold sentiment as she drew her legs up under her as she sat in the corner of his couch. “I knew you’d say that before I even left my place this morning.” Still, her mood dropped slightly, no less comforting as she lent forward to pluck a cushion from between them, pulling it into her lap. “It’s been so long since I was.. not together that it’s just a hard concept to be okay with. People expect things. If you don’t meet them you’re a coward or.. fragile. I’ve never liked being seen as either.” She shrugged, ”So what’s your weak moment then? If it’s got anything to do with you not beating your own record in marshmallows.. i’m in awe.”

“You and me both. Especially if my greatest feat is that marshmallow thing. Don’t judge me – my mouth is just bigger than yours. It can fit a lot more girth,” Vasa grinned at his childish innuendo, shaking his head a little more. “Damn, fine. Wound a guy’s pride.” Vee rubbed his chest, right above his heart, like she had indeed wounded it. He dropped his hand after a moment, settling back into his couch as well as she answered his prying question. It was difficult to get a read on Isa sometimes, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try. “Sure, they expect things. But fuck them. They’ll never really understand what you’re going through.” Her question made him smile, and he tried to pride himself on ensuring no one ever saw his weak moments. “When my mother went missing – I’d never felt more alone. I’m sure you think I’m crazy, considering I have all these siblings who’d die for me, but they were...panicking. The ones that work at the station were always working, and they were so determined to find things that sometimes they’d just...well, it’d be radio silence. For days.”

The soft touch of his lips against her knuckles wasn’t exactly expected and yet the heat seared across the back of her hand and up through her arm much brighter than she knew his warmth to be. “I don’t feel like ripping anyone’s carotid arteries out, if that’s what you meant.” The idea a little more far fetched to her now. The time spent poisoning herself to drown out her own hunger, caught within the confines and company of safety was something she’d not realized she’d missed until this very moment. “I’m the epitome of picture perfect control now,” the slight roll of her hues upwards and the blooming laugh that followed painted with the self depreciating dig. “Thanks, for what you did. I know you’re gonna’ say it wasn’t a big deal,” she shrugged, “but it was to me so..”

Vasa gave a wry smile, “That’s better than the alternative, I guess. Though you could’ve fooled me. Isadora Bordeaux – down on her luck. You should write a book.” The Rhodes moved towards his couch, motioning for her to follow, “You here to stay the night again? Knew my bed was too good for you to pass up.” As she spoke, Vasa waved his hand, “It’s not a big deal,” he echoed, just to wink at her. Sinking down into the couch, Vee waited for her to follow suit, “You don’t have to always feel like you have to be put together in front of me, you know. We all have our weak moments, and that just makes life...bearable.”

“Are you feeling any better?” It was a strange question to ask a Bordeaux vampire, but the Rhodes couldn’t entirely be bothered to think about semantics. The last time they’d spent a decent amount of time together, she’d requested vervain. Reaching out, he placed a kiss against her cold knuckles, “I mean, I know that’s kinda vague but, you were pretty upset last time we talked.”

“You’re not too bad, Hart.” Vasa was grinning from ear to ear, on the other side of the sparring mat. It had taken long enough, but Myles had finally agreed to allow the Rhodes to drag him into a sparring match. Vasa wasn’t trying to go easy on the other, but he was mildly holding back – for now. “Anyone ever tell you you’re cute when you’re all sweaty?”

“I don’t suppose you happen to carry a flask of water with you that I could use?” Calypso asked the first passerby, not wanting the bloodstain to throw off any person willing to speak with her. Her loyal steed stood next to her, a bag tied to the saddle, dripping with blood. A bounty she’d come to collect but she couldn’t get the blood from her clothes with just a cloth, and her flask was emptied during the hunt. “You’d do me a great pleasure, serah.” 

“Sometimes I forget you weren’t born doing this, Vasa,” CJ complimented her younger brother after watching him working on his form for upcoming tournaments. “How many months has it been without losing a match?” @veexrhodes​

“So um, you two know each other?” Myles looked between Isadora and Vasa as he sat at the hunter’s small kitchen table. It’d seemed like a good idea, a way to combine two people he liked to be around. And a way to keep Isadora a little more comfortable. They’d texted since their last encounter, but he hadn’t felt it appropriate to bring up meeting in person. When he’d thought about meeting in a group or with another person, Vee had been his first thought. He’d been someone he’d been meaning to meet outside of the Sanctuary and he figured Isadora would maybe feel a bit safer being around him knowing there was a skilled hunter around. Not like he thought Vee was going to try anything, but he’d do anything to keep the original vampire from pushing him away. @isxdcrx @veexrhodes

Vasa rose an eyebrow at Myles, trying not to laugh at the look on the other male’s face. The Rhodes was currently sitting on the bar counter of the small kitchen, huffing out a laugh before he looked at Isadora, “Yeah, she likes to cuddle. We can all share my bed if you need someone to hold you, Myles.” He looked back at the other, a smirk on his face since he clearly couldn’t help himself at this point. “You guys need anything? I don’t really have a lot of food. But there’s a pizza place that delivers.”

It seemed so simple and the near innocent way in which Vee seemed to view having an Original vampire on the brink of losing control stay here was..– almost a relief. That he could still paint it in such easy light was almost entirely the opposite of what most people considered doing the moment they figured out she certainly wasn’t feeling like herself. She’d attacked Teddy — almost Myles too. A sinking feeling that didn’t seem to let up. “— Look at me differently, is what I meant.” A strange thing, she knew, but Isadora had always preferred being seen as little more than just like everyone else. The childlike shift of his features might have been just enough to pull lightly at the corner of her mouth, a semblance of some kind of smile hinted beneath lingering uncertainty. “Whatever you have honestly.. Nothing really makes it any easier to take, beer maybe?” She moved a little further into the room, slowly but surely feeling a little more comfortable the more he spoke. “I always preferred the mini ones, you know — for hot chocolate and pancakes. I feel like ten is a little underwhelming though.” Hues a little brighter in the prospect of not having to do this alone, Isa cast a soft challenge with the growing twitch of her smile.

Vasa grinned a little more, wrinkling his nose at Isa, “I mean, I could look at you funny if you want. Like how you kinda look like a wreck and you should probably come and sit down before you actually fall over.” The Rhodes huffed out a laugh, “Beer? Okay. I can do that.” He picked up the bag of jumbo marshmallows, then two beers. He handed one to the vampire, before he put his hand on her elbow to somewhat tug her towards the living room. “Underwhelming? You’d choke on the mini ones. Those aren’t much fun. Also, it’s kinda not fair for you to participate in breaking my record. You don’t have to breathe, I have to make sure I don’t suffocate on jumbo sugar puffs.”

Not thrilled to see him. Somehow that hurt her. Just a little bit, enough to will herself to relax. “I’m in my sixties.” Every so often Gwen refused to acknowledge her human years on Earth. That hadn’t been living. This, what Rowan had given her, that was life, this was who she was. Or at least who she was trying to be. “Sixty-eight, exactly.” Maybe sixty-nine, she forgot sometimes. Years tended to blur together at this point. What was a year when you were promised decades? Even better, potentially centuries. Gwen’s fingers picked at the edge of a manicured fingernail and her eyes went from where she chipped the nude paint to Jonah’s sibling. A small, but genuine smile pulled at the corners of her lips at the idea of the jokes. Jonah would find them insufferable, but it’d be worth it for the slight annoyance on his face. Maybe he’d even blush. “Are you the youngest then? Of his siblings?” She wasn’t just going to let this be an interrogation, there were things she wanted to know, too.

Vasa wasn’t sure if he was getting through to Gwen or just making her more irritated, but he bad a habit of not quitting while he was ahead. “So you’re almost sixty-nine? Kinky.” He managed another smile, shrugging his shoulders, “Not the youngest. But I’m twenty-three. I got rescued just like the lot of my siblings. So – why Jonah?”

The wink was almost worth another eyeroll. A facepalm, something like that. Instead Myles just gave a soft chuckle and shook his head at the offer for another shot. Hunting didn’t pay the bills, that’s why his family had always been so adamant they all learn a trade. His father had carpentry, two of three brothers were into mechanics. When he’d left, the last of them had been undecided. He himself had just been comfortable doing whatever repair work he could get with family connections and that’d served him alright from Colorado to New York. “So what do you do for cash then?” He was genuinely curious. Something told him Vee wasn’t the type to be running off to the police academy. In fact, if he hadn’t seen him fight, he wouldn’t really believe the guy was a hunter. “Are you New York’s most chatty waiter?” 

Vasa shook his head, lifting another shot, “Manuia, Myles.” The Samoan language flowed off his tongue much easier than English ever had, and the more he drank, the more difficult he found pronouncing all the words of the latter language correctly. “What do I do for cash...well, I work here. As a bouncer. People don’t really fuck with you when you’re the one leading the security detail. What’s the phrase? Head bitch in charge. Yep.” Vee smiled a little at Myles, genuinely interested in every word the other male had to say, “Are you New York’s most sober twenty two year old? We all have our quirks, Myles. So maybe we should find a place with a dancefloor instead of a fighting ring.”

Ghost hummed, content to hear that he hadn’t scared Vasa. He was a big guy, he was used to being taken as scary, let alone after telling a hunter what he really was. “Well, I don’t want you in any more messes than necessary. And I know you’ll figure it out. You’re still so young,” he mused, shaking his head a little. Talking like this, it was easy to forget how young Vasa really was, for such an emotionally mature young man. “I do love them,” he smiled, the memory of his loved ones, his vessels, still so vivid in his brain and so warm to his heart. “No original face, no, it’s not like the blue girl from X-Men, I’m afraid. I don’t know now who was my first face. But I did love them all. Still do, but they’re not with us anymore, not in this plane. This was one of the first faces I used, Kalani. His name was Hilo. I can never keep their names, you know, it’d be inappropriate,” he murmured, looking down for a moment as he let one hand graze over his forearm lovingly, like he was touching an old friend. He’d been Kalani for so long, it’d been a while since he last stopped and remembered Hilo. “I’ve taken shapes and sizes from people I didn’t care for, but that’s just for fun. Could never stand to live in a body I don’t love for longer than a week. Hilo was one of the greatest men I’ve ever met. It’s good to keep him around.”

Vasa wrinkled his nose, though he couldn’t really argue. He was young, frustratingly so, but he tried to act older than he was. He followed both Cj and Julian, attempting to emanate them in some way or another. He wasn’t the last adopted, but he’d felt close enough to still be reeling from all the information he’d learned, and how much more his siblings knew. “Blue girl from X-Men?” Vee couldn’t help but chuckle at that, shaking his head. It still baffled him, how an oneiroi came from nothing. “You can change into anyone, and I think it’s...I don’t know.” Vasa had never been in love before; he couldn’t empathize with the way ghost was speaking. Maybe one day he’d understand. “Wouldn’t that be more depressing than not?”

Myles rolled his eyes before tapping the bottom of his shot glass on the bar and bringing it to his mouth. Awful, immediately awful. He grimaced at the taste of the liquor as it went down. Thankfully a shot didn’t really allow him to revel in the taste. Glass back down on the counter, his eyes moved from the bar and back to the hunter as he considered the options. In a way, he was curious as to how the Rhodes’ did things. How they grew up, how they were trained. A lot of them were in law enforcement, they were adopted, they were good at what they did. “And what, you just spend all your spare time here? Doesn’t sound like you got any time for kissin’.” It was a shy attempt at returning Vee’s playful banter. “That all you do? Just train?”

He tried not to laugh at the look on the other boy’s face, but a smirk tugged at his mouth anyway. “Want another?” he teased, though he was more than ready to keep giving Myles alcohol. One beer couldn’t be fun. “I have plenty of time,” he grinned, flashing Myles a wink before he shook his head at the question. Truth was, no one really showed a mild interest in him – ever. He was usually too focused on the task at hand, and maybe he was too young to understand what some kind of commitment in a relationship would look like. Didn’t mean he wasn’t looking forward to trying, anyway. “You could say that. I don’t really know what I’m doing with my life. Hunting doesn’t exactly pay all the bills.”

“Of  course I do.” The smile she gave felt forced. She knew it was coming, that she couldn’t avoid the subject forever. They’d been lucky, her and Jonah, to keep what they had private and without interference from either side of things. Gwen had convinced herself that she didn’t care about their differences, that she was just fortunate to find someone she tolerated. And who in turn, tolerated her. She’d had her suspicions about Jonah in general but had chosen to turn a blind eye to them. It was part of their game, the mystery. But Noah’s death, that night in general, had made her realize she had to be just a bit more careful. Another sip of wine and she was perching herself on an empty bar stool, crossing her legs at the ankle. “What do you want to know?” Smile dropped, she eyed the young hunter curiously. There wouldn’t be any games with this one, this was an important meeting.

“Right...no wonder you don’t look thrilled to be talking to me.” Sure, Vasa knew he was a lot, but it was his duty as that annoying younger brother to check in on Jonah and who he was surrounding himself with. “Well – how old are you? I already have about ten cougar and cub jokes I’m saving for him because we both know how he’ll react.”

There was no point in denying anything he’d said, however, she couldn’t let go of the fact that while the weight of their loss over the new year weighed heavy on the shoulders of her siblings, she didn’t see any of them so easily struggling with their hunger. None of them thrown into a frenzy beyond their own control, as if it’d never been her to begin with. “Thanks for.. – getting it. Most people just..– well, you know.” The last person she’d spoken to about any of it had.. all but belittled her for it. Despite being here for such a specific reason, she couldn’t help but eye off the vervain in his hand with uncertainty, but she’d been left with little else to do to find stable ground. An uneven sigh had her reaching into the bag over her shoulder for the last blood bag she had on her, almost empty and soon drained by her last sliver of resolve, the final remnants of crimson skirting their way into her system by force against the differing taste had it been fresh. “Okay.” She nodded slowly, unsure of how any of this would go, but, she supposed, she’d come to him for this very reason; he could protect people should he need to – and if she happened to be that someone then.. okay. “Okay, I’ll stay.” 

“What? Try and talk you out of it?” Vasa shrugged his shoulders, unsure what else he should say at the moment. Despite his initial misgivings, it wasn’t like vervain was going to kill her. If she really wanted to subdue some of her power, then he wasn’t going to stop her. It was his job to protect people, anyway. “Good. It’s been a while since I’ve had a sleepover,” he joked, wiggling his eyebrows like a child would before he moved towards his fridge. “You want something to drink with your side of vervain? I have food, too. I buy the jumbo marshmallows because you never know what you’re going to crave in the middle of the night. So far, I’ve fit about ten in my mouth. Impressive, right?”

“They are. Of course they are. Thankfully not everyone’s human on the force or from the fed’s NYO.” There were enough supernaturals between the NYPD and the FBI’s New York Office to try to work the New Year’s catastrophe and avoid certain questions. But the people would want answers CJ wasn’t sure they had to give. Not yet. Crouching, she nodded ahead to the camp that had been set up at least three hundred feet away by the witches who’d been terrorizing some upstate towns. Maybe they thought with everything going on in New York, hunters would be less likely to be out doing their jobs these days. “The one was putting up protection spells but didn’t’ work further than that.” A tree about two hundred feet from the came and a hundred from CJ and her brother, “we can go in and deal or we can lure them out.” A question asked as a statement, letting Vasa have some of the lead in the hunt.