undergrounds | see the world through my own eyes [OPEN]

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see the world through my own eyes [OPEN]

A) HILLINGDON HOUSE

Ringer didn't particularly frequent the House. It was the sort of destination she only recalled when she needed something, be that information, work, or a random need to connect with something beyond her own life. University and her private hunting kept her busy often enough that it could be isolating at times and while she wasn't one to mind the time to herself, the girl knew that she stood a better chance of survival if she had more allies. Besides, sometimes it was nice to spend time with people who could hold a conversation about vampires, witches, and the other allegedly fictitious creatures of the night.

She ran a hand through her hair, a perfunctory gesture to push it out of her face, and took a seat off to the side by the wall. One of the counselors at her old school said she would probably continue to want her back to a wall for quite some time, called it Post Traumatic Stress. The woman may have been right. Ringer considered it a logical and safer choice in places that might be less than friendly. Still, she had taken to talking to strangers and acquaintances alike, trying to follow that whole 'no man is an island' practice. For that reason, she glanced up to the person who seemed unoccupied and offered a simple, "Hey."

B) DARK ALLEYS AND DEAD BODIES

Ringer was an intelligent person. Unfortunately, she was also fairly new at this whole hunting thing and made more mistakes than she'd care to acknowledge. When she came upon a dead body in central vampire territory, it never occurred to her that it would be anything other than a supernatural death and supernatural creatures to deal with. Crouching over the body, she turned the young woman's head and pushed her hair back, examining her neck for the telltale injury. Except there wasn't one. Turning the body over completely, she found the mark instead on the woman's breast and rolled her eyes at the cliche, gloved fingers tugging the clothing to cover in a more chaste fashion.

It wasn't until she heard sirens suddenly roar to life not far away, her black gloves covered in blood, that it occurred to her how bad this might look. She stood from the body, frozen with momentary panic, wondering if she should stay and admit to finding the body or if she should bolt and hope there were no witnesses to her presence here.

C) LIBRARY RESEARCH

The London Library was known for its vast resources, one of the largest such public institutions in the whole of the country. It was here that Ringer went to conduct her latest research, seated at one of the many long tables and absorbed in her own world despite the people wandering by. At least she had the table to herself at present.

It was a two birds with one stone kind of day, her homework from uni scattered in front of her with her laptop to the right, while the research she had yet to do stood in stacks both on her left and in the center of the table. She was nearly finished studying for her exam on psychology, at which point she could switch to studying the horde of archive clippings on mass deaths from the London area stretching back the last 20 or so years.

Unless, of course, someone decided to interrupt.

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Annie was unoccupied, but that didn't mean she was responsive. She'd come to the house for her own research, looking up nests around where the Fourth District had been. Anything to try to hunt down those responsible for the massacre, and for ruining her life. Unfortunately, such research came with a lot of awful images, and even worse, flashbacks. This forced Annie into an uncomfortable head space, and it wasn't long before she found herself back at the school, covered in blood that wasn't hers.

In the library, where Ringer had just entered, Annie sat at one of the desks, her own back to the wall, looking straight ahead. One hand was entrenched in her tangled red hair, pulling at it. The other dug into her leg in a failed last attempt to help ground her before she went away completely.

Eyes unfocused, she wasn't even aware that Ringer was speaking, only that there was so much blood and death around her.

It was an automatic gesture to scan any room she entered. It had been for a long time now. Normally it was to gain a sense of where everyone was, who might be a threat, and where the exits were. It was automatic and rarely lead to much conscious thought, a way to register information in the brain without more than a few seconds' effort. This time, however, something caught her eye and Ringer's attention was focused on the girl sitting not far away.

The woman was staring, not at anything in the room, but past all of the tangible objects back into her own mind. Although impossible to recognize or pinpoint precisely what the problem was, Ringer knew without question that something was wrong. She set her bag on the corner of the table and approached the woman slowly, speaking from a distance. "Hey. Are you okay? Can you tell me your name?"

Ringer won't get a response from Annie. Not for a few moments at least. Her nails were practically puncturing her jeans, her knuckles white. The hand in her hair was pulling, letting the weight of her arm hang down, doing the pulling for her.

There were words, she could hear them, a young woman speaking. Slowly, she turned to her, eyes wide and unfocused. The girl was speaking to her. Asking a question. But she couldn't find the meaning behind them, find her own words. So all Ringer is going to get in response is a shake of her head.

Ringer waits patiently, taking one slow step forward and then another. She remains out of the woman's reach, conscious of the possibility of being attacked. The questions are repeated, trying to allow the woman's attention to come back to the present and wondering what trauma might have caused this kind of disconnect. It made her angry at whoever or whatever had been responsible.

"Okay," she acquiesces to the shaking of the other woman's head. Ringer glances around the space before looking at the woman again. "You're safe here. It's the library. No one here is going to hurt you. I won't let them."

That she understood fully. No one was going to hurt her. This woman wouldn't let them. Okay. That was... that was good. Though how long could anyone last, was the question? She'd seen so many capable people taken out by vampires.

"Safe," Annie repeats softly, after what feels like an eternity of trying to find her words. She looks at the other woman, her eyes still unfocused.

Ringer resists the urge to sigh and easily tempers her own impatience. Her restlessness is aimed at whoever is responsible, after all, not the woman herself. She crouches down to roughly Annie's seated height, a little shorter, to bring her closer to eye level.

"Safe," she reiterates. "I know what it's like to see terrible things. But you're not there anymore. This place is safe."

"Terrible things." The more words she can grab on to, the closer she is to coming back to the present, to being able to recognize the library, and ask the woman in front of her her name. But right now, she's focused on those terrible things, the blood and death and those fangs sinking into her neck.

She lets out a strangled cry and pushes herself backwards against the desk, against the wall.

"They'll get in!" She gasps, "can't invite them in, no no no." The school had been public property.

Ringer tenses, ready to leap up and either fight or run as needed. Instead, the woman seems to withdraw and Ringer heaves the smallest silent sigh of relief that it seems not to be escalating to a point of physical confrontation. She's never been great with people. The traumatized ones are somehow easier, but she doesn't know exactly how to talk to them and only hopes she doesn't make things worse.

Vampires. The woman has been a spectator or, more likely, a victim of the creatures. It's no wonder she's scared, especially if she knew nothing of vampires before being attacked. And surviving. "No one invited them. There are a dozen people here who would kill anyone that tried to attack."

She wouldn't hurt her. Not without a reason, and so far, Ringer hadn't given Annie any sort. The monsters were in her head, however.

"Uninvited," she said softly, nodding. "Good- good- there were lots last time." Lots of capable hunters in her school. "Won't stop them, if they get in." The entire school had been over-powered. It had been an attack a long-time coming, a long-time planned, but how was Annie to know that? "Didn't stop them last time."

"Lucky for us they aren't here," she replies honestly. Ringer can't really argue the idea that vampires can overpower them and that if enough of the nest got into this place, they would probably be killed. She also doesn't know the extent of protections on the House or if it's merely reputation or the sheer force of brute strength behind it that protect them. Ringer won't falsely reassure the woman, even if it hurts the situation a little. Not unless it's necessary.

"Where were you before?" She asks softly, wondering if pushing for information will make things better or worse.

"Lucky," she repeats, because repeating words helps ground her, helps bring the idea that they're communicating home. She needs that. Besides, it gives her something to focus on. Maybe it's not tangible, but it's a thought. They were lucky here. There were no vampires. They were safe, because no one was going to let them in.

Where was she before? It takes Annie a moment to find the words. "District 4. 4th District." Both names that were used for the school.

Ringer wonders if the woman is cursed to repeat until she finally replies with words entirely new and unfamiliar. The girl doesn't recognize the name as anything familiar and, for the moment, files it away as incomplete information. It's possible that the attack was a quiet affair. It's equally possible that whatever information there was about the attack was buried under false stories, like the attack on Ringer's own school.

"This is the Hillingdon House," she offers instead, trying to give the woman more words to parrot back. "You're in the library. No vampires have been invited in. There are a lot of hunters here. Are you a hunter?"

"Yes." Hunters, Hillingdon, those are things she can hold on to, and slowly use them as hand holds to pull herself out of her own head, back into being Annie Cresta. Or, at least, being a socially acceptable Annie Cresta. She always feared that her true self was the girl who had always gone away. The girl that had been lost in those attacks, rather than the one dragged from the wreckage, alive but barely breathing.

"I'm a hunter." Like her father had been, and her mother. "Annie Cresta." Her name, okay, good, they were making progress.

"Your name is Annie Cresta?" Ringer's a bit at a loss and continues trying to clarify, unintentionally slipping into some parroting of her own. It seems like the woman is getting better. Ringer can only continue to do what she knows, try to bring back the person lost to trauma, coax them back into the present where their situation is not the same as what they fear it to be. She's grateful that, for all her own traumas, she doesn't suffer the same intense flashbacks.

"You're a hunter. Are you human?"

Another nod from Annie, her fingers lowering from their place in her hair slightly. She kept searching Ringer's face. "Yes- I'm human." And a hunter as well.

"Are- are you?"

"Yes," she acknowledges immediately. "I'm a human. And a hunter. I fight vampires."

Ringer pauses, waits, hoping it will be enough to help coax Annie back to the present. She shifts her weight from one leg to the other, remaining a little below eye level. "I've seen a lot of death. I know what they're capable of. That won't happen here."

"Me, too." More words she could recognize. That was good. Annie rolls her shoulders forward and peers up at Ringer. This girl was sweet and kind. She had her best interests at hand.

She takes a long inhale, closes her eyes, and after another lengthy exhale, opens them once more.

"I'm sorry."

Ringer's grateful when the woman's eyes finally come into focus and fall on her. It feels like a victory, however small. Slowly, very slowly, Ringer moves to stand, maintaining her safe distance from Annie - safe for both of them. "Is it alright if I sit?"

She gestures to a chair not far from Annie, consciously ignoring the apology. It's entirely unnecessary.

She nods mutely, then, quickly adds, "Yes," because if she doesn't use her words, she'll lose them again.

"I really am sorry. You don't- you don't knowme." And she'd just seen her at some of her weakest.

Ringer moves to the chair and takes a seat, setting her hands first in her lap and then realizing her own paranoia would hate the gesture and moving them instead to rest on the table. She shakes her head at the reiteration, hair spilling lightly over her shoulders.

"You have nothing to apologize for." She pauses. Then, in an uncommon move reserved only for those who have earned it, Ringer opens up slightly. "I don't have flashbacks. I have nightmares. It's not your fault."

"But I should know better." She can't face her past, even if she's desperate for retribution. For some sort of revenge against the nest that destroyed her life. And the lives of so, so many others.

She bites her lower lip. "You don't deserve them."

"You didn't deserve it. Life isn't fair." Ringer states plainly. She understands blaming oneself and the desire for revenge, even as it goes unspoken. It's the same sickness and distrust she feels for the Night Council and Unseelie even now. Someone told her in the aftermath that she'd come to feel better with time and a good support system. Ringer's never had support and time hasn't done jack. She wonders if Annie feels the same. "You can't always control your own mind."

Annie looks away, touching her chin to her shoulder and dropping her eyes.

"It isn't. And you can't. Just- I wish I could. I don't want to be like this. Finnick doesn't deserve a girlfriend like me." She speaks his name with reverence and affection, her Seelie boyfriend, the love of her life.

Ringer seems entirely empathetic until she mentions the name Finnick. Then the girl tenses, becoming visibly stiff and awkward. It's a man- a fey she's only recently met, and not in the best of circumstances. To think that arrogant flirt of a man has a girlfriend.. Ringer wonders how many he has and if Annie's delusional in believing Finnick to be better than he is.

"I didn't realize you and Finnick were a thing," she says plainly, relaxing now that the initial shock has worn off. "If you want him, he deserves you. Being broken doesn't make you unlovable."

Yes, yes indeed, he had a girlfriend. One he hadn't exactly met in the best of circumstances, but they'd been drawn to each other, understanding each other in ways that no one could ever explain. She loved him, though. And he loved her. She knew it. She had to believe it.

"You know him?" She tilts her head softly to the side and smiles. The very thought of him always made her feel warm. "He should be with someone who isn't broken. A girl who isn't me." That she would always believe. He was too good for her. But. "But you can't choose who you love."

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