undergrounds | IT'S GOING DOWN I'M YELLING TIMBER (aka the one where Millicent dies)

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IT'S GOING DOWN I'M YELLING TIMBER (aka the one where Millicent dies)

i. Let's Make A Night You Won't Remember [closed to Jean-Claude]
a bar, earlier this week

Alex doesn't know who she's supposed to be meeting, just that somebody wants to meet her. She arrives twenty minutes early, makes notes of the exits, and orders herself a dry martini to blend in. It doesn't hurt to take a few extra precautions when apparently half the city knows that you're planning to murder a high-ranking official, which is why she also has her silver knife hidden in her pocket.

She doesn't touch the drink, just sits and glowers at the bar's main entrance, waiting for the person she's supposed to be meeting to show.

ii. I'll Be The One You Won't Forget [open to all]
Westminister, May 26

Millicent is leaving the Night Council building, and Alex plans to follow her. She's not going through with the hit for a couple more days, but she needs a better grasp of the vampire's schedule. So she's lurking about half a block away from the building, waiting.

To the untrained observer, she looks like a bored girl leaning against a wall eating a muffin. Someone paying closer attention, though, might notice how often she looks down the street, and the fact that she's been very slowly eating the same muffin for the past forty-five minutes.

iii. The Bigger They Are, The Harder They Fall [closed to Evie]
Islington, May 28, nighttime, before Millicent dies

For the past week, Alex has been sharpening her stakes, going over all the info she has on Millicent's usual habits and schedule, planning the hit. She's decided on a close-quarters kill. For once thing, she's not sure that a wood-tipped bullet, even if it hits right between her eyes, would actually kill Millicent. For another thing, and more importantly, she wants it to feel personal. She wants Millicent to know who's killing her and why.

She knows it'll be risky, but risk never stopped her doing anything before. On the night she's picked to do it, she makes her way stealthily into Islington territory, towards the place she expects Millicent to be. A few blocks away, she pauses in a doorway to double-check her weapons - three stakes and a gun with wood-tipped bullets - and to go over the plan, such as it is, one more time in her head.

Maybe she's just jumpy, but she thinks she sees something move out of the corner of her eye. She whirls around, but nothing's there. Frowning, she goes back to checking her gun.

iv. I'm Slicker Than An Oil Spill [open to first response]
Islington, May 28, nighttime, after Millicent is dead

One of the vampires saw her. Which is bad, really bad. She ditches her jacket on a bench as she hurries past it, hoping that changing up her look slightly will shake off any pursuit. If they're looking for a girl in a black jacket and they spot her... It's not much. It's barely anything, really. If they spot her they'll know who she is. She should have kept the jacket, it was a stupid idea to lose it.

If she does get stopped, she needs to not be carrying suspicious things like stakes and guns with wood-tipped bullets. So she finds a sewer grate under a broken streetlight and pulls out three stakes and her gun. It's not that she has any sentimental attachment to her weapons, but it's not always easy to get replacements. She drops two of the stakes down through the grate without hesitation, but decides to keep the third. She'll need to defend herself if she does get caught.

She catches a shadow moving out of the corner of her eye and turns towards it, keeping the third stake and the gun out of sight.

"Somebody there?"

v. End of the Night, It's Going Down [closed to Natasha]
Ealing, May 28, late night

Alex can't go home. One of the vampires saw her face. It won't take them long to figure out who she is and where she lives. She's ditched most of her gear and her jacket, but that won't throw them off the scent for long. She needs somewhere to lay low for a while. Maybe a long while.

She can't go to any of her known acquaintances, either. The vampires will look for her there, and she doesn't want to put anyone else in danger. She needs someone that nobody knows she knows, someone nobody would expect her to hide out with.

It takes her longer than she'd like to admit to think of Natasha. She'd cautioned Alex against killing Millicent, so it's entirely probable that she'll want nothing to do with the fallout, but it's worth a try. Alex makes her way to the Redbright Institute and sneaks around until she finds a familiar smell. Carefully, just in case this goes south fast, she pulls her stake out and keeps it down by her side as she quietly follows Natasha's scent.

vi. One More Shot, Another Round [closed to Kyle]
Kyle's secret new apartment, May 31, morning

For the past few days, Alex has been in hiding. She can't risk anyone finding out where she is, so she's been very careful about contacting people she knows. When she gets a note from Kyle telling her to meet him at an address she's never heard of, she briefly wonders whether it's really from him or a trap set by someone trying to catch her.

She decides to risk it. She puts on a pair of shades and, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, takes an extremely circuitous route to the address, hoping to shake anyone tailing her. Finally, she makes it. Instead of going through the front door, she climbs the fire escape and knocks on the window of what she hopes is the right apartment.

[If anyone wants their own prompt, hit me up at

notverywool!]

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Slowly, a little awkwardly, Alex starts to lower the stake. It doesn't seem like Natasha's going to attack her.

She shakes her head. "No. I was careful."

She's used every trick she knows to shake a possible tail. If anyone is following her, they'd have to be invisible, inaudible, and odorless. Which is probably possible, but unlikely.

"All right," Natasha says, mostly to fill time before she answers. She turns the situation over in her head, considering what they can do and what she should do. It occurs to her that she should probably turn the girl over to someone. One of the people who passes for the law in their community. She never really considers doing that, though. She knows how that ends, and it's no good for Alex. Probably not that good for her, either. It would draw attention that Natasha doesn't welcome.

After a moment of silence, she frowns in surrender. "In that case, let's get you off the street before you get made. We'll take you to my place for now."

Even if anyone knew to look for Alex with Natasha, almost no one knows where she's staying anyway.

She takes a step closer, meeting her eyes, searching her face for argument. "We can figure out what to do with you after that once we're out of sight."

Alex stands very still, jaw clenched, knuckles turning white as she grips the stake harder, waiting nervously for any indication of what Natasha's going to do. Finally, she lets out a short, sharp breath of relief. Her hold on the stake loosens, and she lowers it all the way.

When Natasha steps forward, Alex doesn't back down. She meets Natasha's eyes, glowering but not arguing. Figuring out what to do with her sounds potentially ominous, but going back to Natasha's place is a good plan, and the best outcome she could have hoped for.

"Thank you," she says, softly but sincerely.

"You can thank me if you survive the night," Natasha says. It puts her back down a little that Alex thanks her, though. Makes her wonder what she did to deserve this—both Alex's trust and the trouble she was going to be put through.

"It's this way."

From there, Natasha starts back toward the street. Her place isn't all that far away. Walking distance, though not as quick as she'd like considering every vampire in London is or will be looking for Alex before long, but if they keep their heads down and walk with purpose, they'll probably make it without attracting attention.

Natasha doesn't try to talk on the trip.

Alex slips the stake into the back of her pants and tugs her shirt over it. This way, it won't attract attention, and she can still grab it easily if she needs to.

Everything tonight has happened so fast. It's not the first time Alex has been on the run, but it is the first time she's been actively hunted, and it's all she can do to keep up with things as they unfold. For the moment, she has to trust Natasha. In another moment, that could change. It's enough to keep her anxious and on edge, but she tamps down all of that and focuses on the objective of the moment: get to Natasha's place without being noticed.

She follows Natasha in silence, waiting until they get there to ask, "What're you gonna do with me?"

Natasha's apartment isn't much to look at. Clean and in good shape, but it's cheaper than she could afford, small even for the city, and sparsely furnished. Mostly, there's almost nothing to give it personality. No keepsakes or trinkets, not even photos. It feels more like a safe house than a home.

"That's a good question," she says, closing the door behind them and locking it. Not that it will keep anyone out if they're really determined, but the ritual is a small comfort.

"A better question might be what you're planning to do with yourself."

Alex isn't particularly surprised by the way Natasha lives. It's a more honest version of her apartment, sparsity in place of the carefully selected and arranged furniture and knickknacks that make her place appear normal.

"I don't know." She stands in the middle of the room, too awkward and tense to sit or even look around. "I needed a place to lay low. I-- I thought of you."

Arms crossed and chin dipped slightly, Natasha listens to Alex's answer. It's not exactly what she wants to hear, but it's not far off what she expected either.

"So what you're telling me is that you went into this without an exit strategy." Natasha wonders if the girl even expected to survive her attempted. Obviously she wanted to live through it, but wanting something and thinking you're going to get it are two different things entirely. The answer to that curiosity wouldn't do either of them any good, though, and it doesn't accomplish anything to make Alex feel even more lectured.

"You can stay here for today, at least. Until we can figure out something better—you know it would be best for you if you could leave town, right? Spend the next year or two somewhere outside of the nest's reach. I don't suppose you have family you can visit in Australia."

"Yeah." Alex doesn't try to excuse it - she knows she screwed up. She's not sure herself why she didn't plan an exit strategy, whether she was convinced she'd get away clean or whether on some level she didn't expect to get away at all.

Leaving town would be smart. Maybe Kyle will leave with her, and they can run off to a beach somewhere, just like she wanted. But Kyle probably won't go, and, she realizes, she doesn't want to either.

She shakes her head stubbornly. "I can't leave." As nice as the idea of disappearing is, Alex has never been one to run away from anything. "You said this could get bad. If there's gonna be a fight, I'm gonna be in it."

"There could be a fight," Natasha agrees. There's almost certainly going to be a fight. "There's going to be politics too. You've just made one hell of a power vacuum."

And Natasha could speculate what that could mean, but there was no way to say where things would actually go. Maybe things wouldn't be as bad as Natasha feared—but the kind of vampire who was likely to come out ahead in this wasn't likely to be merciful. They'd have to establish quickly that they didn't have anything to do with the murder, and the best way to do that would be seeking justice for the deceased.

"If we're lucky, it won't be open war." She sucks in a thoughtful breath. "If you're not leaving, you'll need to lay low until the heat blows over—whether or not it turns into a fight."

Alex nods. Politics really aren't her thing, but she understands power vacuums. Maybe if they're lucky, the worst vampires will kill each other off vying for Millicent's old job. Maybe if they're really lucky, the last one standing won't be the worst one of the lot.

"I'll stay out of sight. However long I have to." A thought occurs to her. "James, the alpha of my pack. He has to know I'm okay. And..." She trails off awkwardly, searching for the word she wants to use. "...my friend Kyle, he'll be worried about me."

"You can stay here a day or two, while we figure out something more permanent" Natasha says evenly. If Alex doesn't want to, Natasha won't stop her from leaving but at least for the time being it can resolve one question temporarily. That was the thing about juggling. Just keep one ball in the air long enough to handle the others.

Next ball:

"Are you sure it's best for them to know now? If Islington is looking for you, they'll go after people you know. If they don't know you're alive, they won't have to lie."

Natasha briefly entertains thoughts of faking Alex's death, but she doubts that's any more realistic than getting her out of the city.

Not long ago, the thought of coming to a vampire for help, let alone crashing on that vampire's couch, would have been unthinkable. Now it's the only option she's got. Alex's earlier fears of Natasha turning her in or outright killing her are pretty much gone - if she was going to do either of those things, she probably would have already.

She nods again, agreeing to stay. "Thank you."

Alex never thinks very far ahead. She's always crossed each bridge as she came to it, never worrying about tomorrow's problems when she could be focusing on today's. Just stay alive for one more day, one more mission. She's starting to realize that approach doesn't work when she can't walk away from the consequences of the mission, and when she has other people in her life to worry about.

Right now, today's problem is that Kyle's going to be really upset, and James won't have any idea what's going on. But Natasha's right, telling them might only make tomorrow's problems worse.

"I want Kyle to know now." He told her once that he didn't mind her secrets, but not to keep them solely for his protection. "James... as soon as it's safe. He can figure out how t— to fix this. He'll fix it."

Natasha can't speak to Alex's relationship with Kyle, when she should tell him and whether vampires would shake him down. She can guess from context what kind of relationship they might have, but in terms of logistical, political considerations, that's TBD.

James, on the other hand, is Alex's alpha. That makes him very much a known quantity, and the first person who will have to answer for the assassination in any official capacity. Both Islington and, she'd expect, the Night Council at large will expect him to have answers. The more convincingly he can say he doesn't know where Alex is and whether or not she's alive, the better.

Nodding, Natasha approves of Alex's decision. "I can call Kyle. Let him know you're alive and laying low. I'm not telling him where you are though; as long as you're here not a word goes out where to find you."

Natasha hasn't advertised where she lives any more than she could avoid, and she doesn't intend to change that now.

"And I'll get James a message in a few days, once the initial investigation has blown over."

The less Alex gets out and the fewer people know where to even start looking, the better. It's a risk for Natasha to approach an alpha werewolf, but better her than risk Alex and him being scene together in the days following the assassination. As long as no one has any reason to believe Natasha and Alex would be working together, then there's no reason to question two supernatural individuals in the same place at the same time.

Natasha doesn't like what she has to work with, but the more she considers where the political landscape is going to go after this, the more she thinks they might be able to navigate it.

At least for a while.

"That's fine. That's good."

Alex finally feels comfortable enough to move a little further into the apartment. There's not much to it, but she glances around, gets the lay of it, and takes a deep breath before turning back to Natasha.

"Why're you doing all this for me?" Maybe it would be smarter not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but Alex can't help but ask.

"Because not helping you wouldn't put this genie back in the bottle," Natasha says honestly enough. Delivering Alex's head on a platter to Islington might make her friends there, but it wouldn't bring Millicent back, it wouldn't stabilize the nest, and chances were it wouldn't stop other retributions against the werewolves. And whatever favor it garnered her in the vampire community, it wouldn't make her friends in East End. "And maybe I don't exactly have the moral high ground here."

She smiles slightly then, too, raising an eyebrow.

"Are you sure you really want me to encourage me to reconsider?"

"Moral high ground? What do you mean you don't have the moral high ground?" Alex knows Natasha can't have left Russia on the best of terms, but she has no idea what Natasha was doing in Russia. Was it something like this? Did Natasha assassinate someone?

She opens her mouth again, then shuts it. The humor that Natasha apparently sees in the situation goes over her head. After a moment, she says awkwardly, "No, I... I don't get it, that's all. I'm a werewolf, you're a vampire. We're kind of natural enemies."

Natasha sighs. Fifty years ago, she probably wouldn't have gotten the joke either. Natasha's not in a hurry to reveal the depths of her past, but if she's going to let Alex stay here, she might as well put her at ease a bit—if the truth will put her at ease.

"Before I was turned," she says and a little of her hesitation comes through in her voice but she pushes ahead, "I was recruited and trained by the KGB. This? It's not my first rodeo."

At least it should get the point across. Political killing? Not outside of her purview.

"As for you being a werewolf, I guess I don't see it the same way. I've had lots of enemies. Werewolves, hunters, other vampires..." She shrugs a little and gives a snort, almost like a laugh. "It was never personal with werewolves. Not for me."

She doesn't say that she'd barely seen werewolves as actual enemies. When she was younger, she'd thought of them more like rabid dogs. You didn't blame animals for being what they were, or for being sick; you just put them down. The past twenty-five years or so, she'd grown away from that as she'd grown away from many of those attitudes, but she'd never developed the same bitterness some vampires had toward werewolves.

"You need help... and you weren't wrong about Millicent deserving this. It was the wrong choice, but not not the wrong judgment."

Sometimes Alex forgets how old vampires are. The KGB was disbanded years before Alex was even born, and it's a concrete reminder that no matter how experienced she is, vampires will always have seen and done more. It just makes her more determined than ever to be better than them at everything she can be.

She also knows that the Communist Party, and by extension the KGB, had strong ties to the vampire nests in Moscow, and it makes her wonder whether Natasha had any more choice about becoming a vampire than Alex did about activating the werewolf curse. Not that that matters - the most innocent humans could turn into the most monstrous vampires. But it makes her feel a momentary blip of sympathy for the woman, and it's another crack in the ironclad belief her father instilled in her that all vampires are pure evil.

That momentary blip of sympathy makes her admit something that she normally wouldn't. "I uh, I'd never actually killed a vampire before tonight. But I'd do it again," she says stubbornly. "I don't think it was the wrong choice."

Even if it is going to have consequences. Alex still hasn't put a lot of thought into what those consequences might be.

With that much power in one place, of course there had been vampires close by, worming their way into alliances and leeching off the resources both literally and figuratively. Not without reciprocation, though—Natasha's connections to the KGB hadn't ended when she'd been turned.

Natasha smiles again at that admission, still a little thin.

"You're first time, hm?" It's probably not all that reassuring, but she says anyway, "In that case I really don't have the high ground. I've killed more vampires this month than that."

Of course, hers weren't going to lead to a supernatural cold war at best.

"I hope you still feel that way three months from now."

That actually makes Alex feel worse. Her father raised her to be merciless, especially to vampires, and she was trained as a killer. But it's never been easy for her, not as easy as it should be, because deep down she's always hated it. She doesn't want to kill anyone. Vampires, though, they're dangerous. Some of them, most of them, should be put down, and Alex hears Natasha's comment as 'I'm doing a better job of killing them than you.'

She frowns.

"Three months? You really think the fighting'll last that long?"

For a moment, Natasha can only give Alex a flat look. From her perspective, three months will be the minimum of time it will take to understand the impact of Millicent's assassination. The initial retribution would only be the beginning.

And even to a young vampire, a few months seemed like nothing.

"Even if the fighting's done, the fallout won't be over," Natasha explains after a beat, slowly. "Whoever replaces her will just be establishing themselves then, moving out of their predecessor's shadow... but depending on the form Islington's justice takes, there's no reason to believe the violence will have blown over more quickly than that."

Alex really hadn't though it would be that bad. She turns away momentarily, taking a deep breath and swiping a few stray locks of hair out of her face before turning back.

"Then I guess I'll be in hiding for a while." She'd really started to believe she could have a normal life in London. Part of her thinks Natasha's being pessimistic and things will work out sooner than that, but Natasha does have more experience with this kind of thing.

Alex moves towards the couch to sit down. She's been coasting on adrenaline, but now that there's no immediate threat anymore, it's starting to wear off and exhaustion is beginning to set in. "I can sleep on the couch, right? You're not gonna make me sleep on the floor?"

"Make yourself comfortable. Take the couch. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen—I think there's some beer in there."

Not much else, though.

"I can order take out for you if you're hungry."

At this point, any other conversation can wait until later. She figures it's been a long day for Alex; might as well let her get some rest.

Alex slumps onto the couch. She pulls out her stake and drops it on the floor, where it'll be in easy reach if she needs it. She's not entirely convinced that Natasha won't change her mind about helping her, and she did piss off a lot of vampires tonight. It's probably rude to have a stake in a vampire's apartment, but Alex is less concerned with etiquette than she is with being able to protect herself.

"I'm not hungry." She also doesn't drink, but she can grab some tap water if she gets thirsty.

She yanks her boots off and drops them at the far end of the couch.

Now that she's got a little time to think, the enormity of what she's done starts to sink in.

"What do you think they'll do with me if they catch me?" she asks, trying not to sound as apprehensive as she suddenly feels. The vampires she assumes will just kill her, which she knew and accepted as a risk going in, but she has no clue what kind of punishment the Night Council might mete out.

IT'S GOING DOWN I'M YELLING TIMBER (aka the one where Millicent dies)

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