undergrounds | March open post

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March open post

I. The Department Store [OPEN]
Waltham Forest, Morning

A relaxed morning in bed with a cup of tea had turned into a trip to the store to buy a new set of sheets. The mattress was dry now, at least, even if it would probably smell like tea forever, but she'd somehow managed to scrub a hole right through one of the sheets so she'd need a new set of those. The new sheets came with new pillowcases, and she decided she might as well get new blankets too, because her blankets had also fallen victim to the tea disaster, and before she knew it the three hundred pounds she had left in the world became less than two hundred and fifty.

Loaded down with new linens, she headed for the cafe and bought a sandwich and a cup of coffee, ruefully counting out her change. She was so preoccupied with that, hoping that maybe the barista had miscalculated and maybe coffee and a sandwich wasn't really that expensive, that she failed to notice when she nearly walked right into someone, only barely stopping herself spilling coffee all over them.

"I'm so sorry," she said quickly, immediately readjusting her grip on the coffee.

II. The Mansion [OPEN]
Westminster, Night

Alex needed the money. Badly. And it wasn't like she was robbing an orphanage or a bunch of nuns or something. She did research. The guy whose house she was breaking into in the middle of the night was filthy rich and not very nice, and if the contents of his safe happened to go missing, well, that sucked for him. Getting into the mansion was easy, and cracking the safe wasn't much harder. There was some cash and a small bag of diamonds, which she took, and a lot of papers, which she left.

Before tonight, she'd figured out how many guards there were, and had so, so carefully avoided all of them. So it came as a huge surprise when she heard a floorboard creak and whirled around to find a guard pointing his gun at her.

A short fight later, Alex was running full speed towards the outside fence. She'd been shot in the shoulder and her hands were slick with blood from digging the bullet out, which made climbing the fence a lot more difficult. Some other guard must have heard the gunshot, because as her hand finally gripped the top of the fence, all the outside lights turned on, lighting the yard up as bright as day. She felt someone grabbing at her ankle, kicked out as hard as she could, and hauled herself over the fence onto the sidewalk. She almost landed square on somebody's head.

III. The Bus Stop [OPEN]
City of London, Early Afternoon

The bus was late. This bus was always late, and Alex knew its exact schedule because Edith rode this bus every week. She had to buy cat food, and it had to be specialty cat food from a specialty store in the City. Alex hadn't believed that at first, because an 85 year old werewolf who was obsessed with cats didn't seem like it could possibly be real. And yet, here she was, carrying around a thirty pound bag of cat food for Edith for the third week in a row.

She didn't hate it as much as she thought she would have. Cleaning dentures was gross, and doing the dishes and laundry and changing beds was tedious. But helping the elderly members of the pack generally felt kind of... good. Which was a weird feeling.

Alex was snapped out of her reverie by someone barreling past her, snatching Edith's purse as he went. Alex did the first thing that came to mind: she hurled the bag of cat food at the thief. It hit him square in the back, broke, and sent its contents showering over a near passerby. She ran over, picked Edith's purse up, and kicked the thief onto his back. He was out cold.

"Are you okay?" she demanded of the passerby.

IV. The Diner [CLOSED to Illya] (backdated to a couple weeks ago)
Camden, Evening

Three weeks to the day that Illya made his deal, Alex waited for him in a small diner near the British Museum. She'd scraped together a few thousand pounds and had it converted to rubles, so she would be able to buy weapons and transportation once she got into Russia. She'd mapped Pinksy Forest, partially from memory and partially by bothering immigrants in Little Russia, and she had some ideas of where the pack's new den might be. All she needed was a way into the country, and Illya, she hoped, would have one for her.

She was too excited to eat. If this worked out, she might be only weeks or even days away from going... not home, exactly, Russia wasn't home anymore. Back to where she started. To finally get closure for everything that had happened to her in the past six years. But she ordered some eggs and sausage for the appearance and sat, picking at them while she watched the minutes tick away on her phone, waiting for him to show.

V. The Confrontation [CLOSED to Kyle] (backdated to late February)

After Lupercalia, Alex spent days worrying that she had ruined whatever relationship she had with Kyle and wondering whether it would be easier to simply pretend she had never met him and move on. But he was a hunter, or at least somehow involved with the supernatural. And even if he'd never directly lied to her, he'd concealed the truth, and in her eyes that was just as bad. She wanted an explanation. Before long, she had worked up enough anger to storm all the way to his place with every intention of confronting him.

There were no obvious signs of life there. Maybe he was out. She raised her hand to bang on the door when she remembered that even if Kyle was a liar, his aunt and uncle might be clueless and innocent, and she didn't want to get them involved. If they came to the door, she would have to exchange pleasantries and possibly pretend to be there for some innocuous reason when all she wanted to do was shout at Kyle.

Instead of knocking, she yanked out her phone and called him. If he didn't answer, then she'd knock.

VI. Choose Your Own Adventure! [OPEN]
Anywhere, Any Time

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"I had no idea you knew about the supernatural or were a part of it," he clarified honestly. Kyle crossed his arms defensively, surprised that she had the nerve to be enraged when he was the one who almost died. He understood it, if she thought he was hunting her, but it hurt. He shrugged as he added, equally sincerely, "I don't have any idea about you."

After all, he still didn't know if she was a werewolf, if she was activated, how often she killed for sport. He cared a hell of a lot less about her lying and a lot more about what kind of person she was. All the lack of prying and pushing he'd done before left him feeling ignorant.

"And you don't kill werewolves?" He was telling her almost exactly what she wanted to hear, but that didn't mean it was a lie. Alex wanted to believe that he was innocent, that she had one friendship that was genuine. That made it easier to relax more, to run her hands through her hair and move back towards the wall, simply watching him and waiting, hoping he'd keep saying the right things.

The fact that he spoke in present tense didn't escape her, but she ignored it. If he wanted to clarify what she was, he could just ask, and that was a lot less important to her at that moment than making sure she hadn't spent the last month caring about someone who killed her kind.

"I don't kill werewolves," he echoed impatiently, wanting to move on to his own questions. Because it was Kyle and he couldn't help himself, he murmured, "Or wererabbits or any other were-animals."

He knew he needed to wait until she was satisfied, or at least calmed, before he could begin his own line of questioning. Which is why he waited for her to ask whatever she needed to ask, glancing back and then half sitting, half leaning on the back of the couch. Realizing she might not believe the simple answer followed by a joke, he added tentatively, "I killed vampires. In South Africa. That's it. I literally didn't know werewolves existed until I came to London and a shapeshifter told me about them. Then a recent friend filled in some of the details."

Alex rolled her eyes impatiently at the joke. She was deathly serious, and while she usually found his humor charming, she didn't right now.

She stood back against the wall by the door, watching him carefully. It wasn't that she needed any easy avenue of escape, more that this position felt more neutral than being further into the room. Him against the couch, her against the wall, each in their own space. She was still too tense to lean back, but she crossed her arms, settling in for what she assumed could be a long conversation.

Just like he'd hoped, he said the right things. Killing vampires was the perfect touch, just what she'd want to hear.

"A recent friend?" She knows it's not really her business, but she can't help asking. But she quickly shakes her head. That wasn't the most important thing right now. "How do I know you kill vampires? That you're not just saying what I want to hear?"

Swing and a miss. Kyle could tell his humor wouldn't help either of their moods at present. His brows pulled together as he focused on being serious, clenching his jaw with frustration and resisting the urge to tense his arms or drop and do push-ups as a way of getting the energy out. On the list of things that would make the situation worse, he was pretty sure that was somewhere near the top, along with making more jokes and trying to kiss her.

"Because you know me. You know I wouldn't lie about this." He shrugged. There was no way to prove what he was saying really. Even if there was, Kyle didn't really want to. Reassuring Alex was one thing, but being forced to provide evidence of his honor was another. "Think about it. If I was a hunter, why wouldn't I kill you? Why make friends?"

"Yeah, I know Kyle the chocolate-seller, not Kyle the vampire killer!" Alex stared at him helplessly, finally leaning back against the wall. She liked to think she knew him, and the Kyle she knew wouldn't lie about that. Everything he was saying fit and made sense, it explained everything, it was completely believable. And she wanted to believe it, but her mind immediately came up with several reasons why he would befriend her rather than kill her.

But... If he'd wanted to infiltrate the pack, he would have let her know he knew she was a werewolf before now. If he knew who she really was, he would have sold her out to her enemies weeks ago. Maybe he was right, and he would have just killed her. Maybe it was alright to believe him.

She frowned at him, feeling the need to defend how angry she had been. "I had to make sure they're the same guy."

"They are!" He replied, voice rising again with his frustration in contrast to her calm. "I told you I was a soldier. Part of my tour dealt with nests in the area. You never asked, I didn't tell. I never lied about any of it."

Kyle straightened from the couch, arms unfolding and dropping to his sides, allowing himself to ride the anger building inside of him as he thought about the situation all over again. "Let's talk about you now. Alex the bad shopper, Alex the ninja, now Alex the fucking werewolf. How many people have you killed? How many humans?"

"Great!" she snapped sarcastically. There might have been more she could have said, more anger at the fact that he was daring to be frustrated with her when she felt perfectly justified in being suspicious of him. But then he asked the worst possible question he could have asked.

Once again, her jaw clenched tight and her hands curled into fists. "You were a soldier, you never killed another human?"

Edited 2016-03-06 05:07 (UTC)

"One and fuck you for asking," he retorted without missing a beat. A human trafficker, selling mostly young kids off to wealthy vampires. There was another innocent woman who he'd shot and was stabilized in the hospital until the addict needed to be fed on again. She'd bled out. Kyle sometimes blamed himself for that, even though he'd been reassured by everyone that the death was never his fault. Everything else had been vampires. South Africa barely saw combat in his regular unit and with his contracting the Fever, he barely had time to kill anyone even if he wanted to. Then it was vampires.

"I'll take responsibility for every death and injury under my command, but I wasn't killing other human beings. And if I was, it would be in defense of fucking freedom, not rounding up hunters to slaughter so you can wolf out whenever you want to!" Skip had told him a lot about werewolves, but not everything. Kyle still wasn't sure how the changing worked or what, if anything, the full moon had to do with it. "How many humans have you killed, Alex?"

"So you're the only one who gets to ask?" Maybe it had been petty and mean of her, but Kyle seemed to have decided that she owed him this. Alex had wanted the truth from him, but there was a difference between asking whether he was a hunter and demanding the darkest secret she had.

"You can't blame me for the festival, I was only there because that's--" That's what you did when you were a werewolf. Show up to the festival, congratulate the ones who were activated their curses, put on a smile and pretend not to hate it because it was for the good of the pack. "I didn't activate my curse like that."

Not an answer to his question, but she was afraid that the answer would make him hate her.

"At least answer before you turn it around." Killing wasn't easy for any reasonable person. Both of them were reasonable and any one they had had to kill would be a bad memory and potentially bring up a whole host of other issues. Kyle was already feeling that paranoia gnawing at the back of his mind, feeling the cortisol pour into his system in anticipation of a combat never to come. He had to focus to push through it all.

He ran a hand angrily through his hair, ruffled it in frustration is more like, before dropping his hand to his side again. He had answered every one of her questions and now here she was, dodging his. "That's what, Alex? Was it an order? Or peer pressure? How did you activate your curse? Are you ever going to answer?"

Alex wasn't going to lie to him, not now, not about this. She cared about him, whether she liked it or not, and she cared what he thought of her. The only options were walk out or admit what she'd done, and if she walked out she'd lose him.

She tried to frame it in as mitigating a light as possible, her tone defensive but sincere. "I was thirteen. A man put a gun to my head and he made me do it."

She couldn't bring herself to admit out loud that the person he'd made her kill was another kid, even younger than she'd been. She'd convinced herself that she'd had no choice at all, that it hadn't even been kill or be killed, the alternative simply hadn't existed. That was the only way she could live with herself, and if she told Kyle the whole truth, she didn't see how he'd be able to forgive her. "When I was older I went back for him."

Those were the only two cold-blooded murders she'd committed, and she hoped she could leave it there. She'd killed one other person, and she really didn't want to talk about that.

Thirteen. The mere idea of Alex having to deal with that kind of trauma made Kyle a different kind of angry. He was almost grateful to hear that she went back for the man and took care of it herself. Almost. He sighed deeply, falling back to lean on the edge of the couch again, dropping his gaze to the floor. It was a lot to take in and he needed a second to think.

The soldier perched his hands beside him on the edge of the couch and stared at a random knot of wood in the floorboards. The guy forced Alex to kill someone, which would activate her curse. He didn't quite understand why the guy would do it, but the effect remained unchanged.

"And that's it?" He asked after a short silence, still staring at the floor. "You don't go around hunting people now?"

The silence seemed to go on forever. Alex was convinced that she'd ruined it. This was worse than punching him in the grocery store, worse even than surprising him at the festival. He'd practically forced it out of her, and she was angry for that, but she was equally angry with herself for giving in and admitting the truth.

Just when she'd made up her mind to cut her losses and leave, he spoke again. "No." The question was genuinely baffling to her. "Why would I do that?"

"Why would I hunt werewolves?" He shot back, snapping his gaze up to meet hers. Both were valid questions, both equally baffling to their recipients. The idea of hunting anything, outside of maybe food, was upsetting to Kyle, even though that's technically what he had done in South Africa. He preferred to think of it as being a soldier and following orders though, engaging enemy combatants. Not hunting. There was an unpleasant insinuation of control there.

After a beat, he dropped his gaze again, returning to his thoughts. "How often do you transform?"

Alex stared him down, waiting until he dropped his gaze to let hers wander away. She didn't want to fight him, but until she knew exactly where they stood, she couldn't risk appearing weak.

"Once a month, on the full moon. I thought everybody knew that." That was an easy enough question. She would happily recite as much basic werewolf lore as he wanted rather than answer another question about her past.

His eyes snapped up to glare at her at the remark of 'everybody knew' and then he dropped them again. Did she miss the part where he hadn't even known they existed until about a month ago? He didn't know anything. That was the point. He'd be a really shitty hunter if he didn't even know that much about his prey. Vampires, on the other hand, he knew almost everything about.

Kyle let a long silence stretch between them, crossing his arms again as he continued to stare at the floor. He understood why she didn't tell him. He understood why she had killed who she had, though the deep need for revenge and killing in cold blood spoke to an aspect of her character that he hadn't known before. She was still Alex. But he'd made the mistake of not prying before and he didn't want to make it again.

"Two more questions and I'm done." As his gaze rose to meet hers. "How did you learn to fight?" One finger. "And why were you at the Festival?" Two fingers. A simple count before he crossed his arms again.

Alex crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall. Part of her resented him for prying the story of her first kill out of her, even if she'd only given him an abridged version.

His confusion about how werewolves worked lent credence to his story. If he was a hunter, he'd know they could only change on the full moon, not at will. Though she really had thought that werewolves changing on the full moon was common knowledge.

But the fact that she believed he was innocent didn't entitle him to more of her past. "No," she said, shaking her head as she pressed her lips into a thin line. "You don't get to ask that. You wanna know why I was at the Festival? Fine. I was there because that's what you do when you're in a pack, you go to the Festival. But my past is my business." Nikita was private, not something she was willing to talk about yet, especially not on demand.

Kyle watched her, angry and so ready to tear out his throat. Or was he imagining that, now that he knew what she was? He wondered if her penchant for anger was related to being a werewolf, or if that was part of her personality. Then he wondered if it made a difference. It was still Alex and he still wanted her as a friend. None of her secrets were any worse than his and, anyway, she seemed to be trying to work past them now.

After a beat, he nodded first in acknowledgment, and then again as if confirming to himself. "Okay."

That was all it took. Once Kyle made up his mind about something, he was pretty damn good at sticking to it. Especially if it involved returning to humor and lighter topics and avoiding the dark. He was still having to fight to remain here, remain himself, and not be swallowed up by the anxiety and fear that his past traumas now tried to force on him. Distraction would help that.

"Does that mean we should be cooking steaks next time?" He asked with the same even tone, though his eyes met hers expectantly and his lips twitched at a smile.

That stunned her. Alex had expected him to fight her, demand the truth, or maybe just kick her out. For a long moment, she stared at him, reeling internally, wondering whether this was some kind of trick or just Kyle being Kyle.

Finally, with a slight shake of her head, brows still drawn down in confusion and annoyance, she said, "We can."

It was bizarre to think that everything could go back to being like it was that easily. She wanted that, but things didn't usually come easy, so she couldn't help but be wary of some hypothetical other shoe dropping.

At least they were on the same page. Kyle was still reeling and knew that things could never go back to the way they were, but that they didn't have to. Maybe they could forge ahead and make things alright between them. She had tried to save him at the Festival and he wouldn't forget that. But he needed time. He knew the best way to move past it was to try to keep things as normal as possible, not to withdraw and think. He didn't want to think.

"You can chew on the bone," he tried, still watching her. Why have a serious talk about serious things when you can joke about them instead.

"That's not funny," she snapped. Alex preferred to think of the wolf as an entirely separate entity from her. Just because she liked steak, and yeah, maybe she liked it rare, and dogs followed her around and she had a really good sense of smell, that didn't mean she was exactly the same as the wolf. "I'm only an animal one night a month."

Despite the fact that she was a little offended by the joke, she still liked that he had found something funny about the whole situation.

He couldn't help the string of new jokes that came to mind and made little effort to hide the small smile from his lips. But he knew better than to continue, holding up his hands in a brief gesture of surrender before dropping them to the couch's edge again. Apparently he wasn't allowed to joke about the situation, but he couldn't handle taking it seriously right now. That didn't leave much in the way of options, which is why the smile quickly faded.

"Okay. So what now?"

Alex looked away when he smiled. If she kept looking at him, she'd smile too, and she was still too annoyed to want to smile at him.

They couldn't get back to the old normal, now that they knew more of the truth about each other. But maybe they could find a new normal that wasn't too different from the old one. After a long pause, she carefully suggested, "Lunch?"

Kyle grimaced slightly with the suggestion, realizing he wasn't quite as over it as he was trying to convince himself he was. But he stood quickly, nodding, trying to hide his momentary hesitation. The soldier forced a smile, awkward yet mostly genuine, as he moved closer to Alex to head toward the door.

"Your treat." More teasing, trying to find a rhythm again. He already missed how easy it used to be with her.

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