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She's not so special so look what you've done boy

It's with your sins you've killed me
Islington, 29 May - Locked to Jean-Claude

Millicent is dead. Millicent is dead. MillicentisdeadMillicentisdeadMillicentisdead.

If Joscelin were even halfway as cool and disaffected as he pretends to be most days, he'd be happy. Ecstatic, even. Over the moon. After all, he's wanted Millicent dead for ages and he's never been very shy about letting people know about it. Millicent had been behind the coup that ousted him from the Nest--she still holds onto his daylight jewel as a reminder of that particular humiliation. Held onto it. He supposes that whoever's stepped into the power vacuum has it now. Oddly, he's far less interested in their new leader than he thought he'd be. The man's a right monster, he knows that, but aren't they all?

He doesn't care much besides that. Because Millicent is dead and she had the temerity to die by someone else's hand.

There aren't many vampires left alive who still remember Aurelia. She's been dead for centuries; there was a different Elizabeth on the currency then. But Joss remembers. Aurelia was his entire world, mother and sire both. Even though Aurelia had been killed by human hunters, Joss has always suspected that it was Millicent who told the hunters where they were hiding. She never did like sharing power.

The man out for a late night stroll with his dog, mercifully, never saw it coming. Joss's rage and frustration needed an outlet--that outlet ended up being the man's neck. Death was near instantaneous when the small vampire ripped out his throat, nearly decapitating him except for some muscle and sinew at the back. The dog got away. Once Joss had drunk his fill he curled into himself and let out a sob. Millicent is dead.

That's how Jean-Claude finds him some time later: covered in blood and gore and crying out his anger and grief into an eviscerated corpse. Joscelin has hated Millicent for five hundred years. How can she just be gone?

Thinking of your sins I die
Islington, 5 June - Locked to Natasha

Besides the dog walker, there are now seven more bodies on the streets. They're mostly indistinguishable from the other vampire kills that now pepper the city after Millicent's death, except that an expert might be able to tell that the bite marks are from a smaller set of fangs than usual. After seventy years of feeding off animals and only using living donors, Joss has gone back to killing humans and seems to be trying to make up for lost time.

He hasn't tried turning anyone yet, but that might change soon. Their new leader has lifted the ban on turning children for the first time in one hundred and twenty years, and there are all sorts of disaffected kids in London who would relish a chance at eternal youth. In fact, there's a children's home not far from where he's been spending a lot of time lately. He's watching it, waiting to make his move.

Thinking how you'd let them touch you
Westminster, 20 June

It's the shortest night of the year.

In London, the sun sets at 21:21 and will rise again at 04:43. That's far less than seven hours of darkness when one factors in twilight and the predawn glow. For a vampire without a daylight ring, summer is torture. Joss has always hated it, being trapped inside all the time while the rest of the world blithely dons sunscreen and pretends to live in a country that isn't perpetually cold and damp.

He's chosen to spend the extended evening hours on this Midsummer's Eve inside a museum, studiously avoiding any skylights and generally trying to escape notice by guards as they begin closing for the night. If he's going to be trapped inside until dark, he might as well do it amongst his long-dead peers.

The small vampire turns down a gallery, walking a row of portraits until he finds the one he's looking for. It's inexpertly done, by later standards; the Renaissance had come to England rather later than other countries. But this Portrait of an Unknown Woman, about 1510 still managed to capture the beauty of the sitter, demure in her gabled hood and heavy gown. The artist hadn't known what he'd painted until much later, when she'd drained the life out of him as payment for the work.

"Aurelia," he murmurs, forgetting himself for a moment. It's far too long since he'd last paid a visit to his sire.

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Jean-Claude can smell the blood before he can see what is ahead of him. He has a moment of flashback of stumbling upon Kenzi in a puddle of her own blood and everything that had come to follow that before he steps forward close enough to hear the sobbing. And then he wonders whether he shouldn't just turn around and let whatever has happened take its course, but he has come this far.

He continues forward cautiously amidst the blood and the gore, until he recognizes just what he's looking at. At who, for that matter. It is not a sight he had expected to find. He does not remember when the last time it was that he has seen the other vampire cry. If ever, for that matter. Moving close, Jean-Claude crouches beside the other vampire, not quite daring to touch just in case it should be the wrong decision to make as he speaks up. "What has happened, mon biquet?" he asks, quietly. Hoping that he will at least be allowed such a comment just this once, considering the circumstances. Truth be told, he is worried about the other vampire, although he does not know how well it will go over with him.

For once, Joscelin doesn't say anything. He tries, God knows he tries. He takes a deep, gulping breath and vainly tries to banish the tears, but they won't stop. He's left scrubbing at his face with a bloody first like some sort of idiot child, while Jean-Claude hovers nearby and he hates himself for every second of it.

It's a sign of the regard he holds for the other vampire that he hasn't yet tried to kill him for witnessing this prolonged moment of weakness. Anyone else, human or otherwise, would have been slaughtered on the spot.

Edited 2016-06-09 05:15 (UTC)

Jean-Claude understands how important Joscelin's pride is to himself. He knows how it rankles him that he has been stuck in the body of a child for the last handful of centuries and the limitations he must suffer because of it. He knows that, if given the choice, he would never demonstrate such emotions in front of another. And so he works hard not to overstep his boundaries, even as he reaches a hand forward to place on the other vampire's shoulder.

"Take your time," he offers quietly, "it is just us here." No one else will be so foolish as to stroll over into this area. Not at this time, not at this hour. And Jean-Claude will see that they are out of there before anyone else should catch them. Joscelin will need to do some cleaning up, of course. Already, Jean-Claude is working through a list of the different places he has that he might take him.

Joscelin cringes away from the hand at his shoulder, at first. He doesn't need anyone's pity, much less Jean-Claude's. But it's also oddly comforting. He leans into it without even realizing he has, and slowly--after vomiting his blood meal all over both of their shoes, like a newborn vampire who has yet to realize his limits--begins to calm.

He sniffles quietly for two or three more minutes and then moves to stand.

"I do hope you weren't overly attached to those shoes," he says by way of apology. "And I think it goes without saying that if you breathe a word of this to another soul you are as good as dead."

Edited 2016-06-11 22:30 (UTC)

Jean-Claude can feel the other vampire relaxing into his touch, and though his shoes are effectively ruined, he does not pay them mind. He is more concerned with the other vampire in his touch and the fact that this is most uncharacteristic of him as well.

He glances up at Joscelin, trying to take in the measure of him, though all he sees is blood and whatever mask the younger vampire has slapped in place besides. He moves to stand, his eyes dark and unreadable as he keeps his gaze on the other. "I have others," he replies, waving away the fact that his shoes are now full of blood. "It is you who concerns me, mon ami. Dîtes-moi, what has happened?"

"Millicent is dead, though I imagine you've heard that already."

Joscelin takes a deep, steadying breath.

"Hers was my life to take. I have wanted her dead for half a thousand years and she lets a wolf kill her?" His voice breaks; he'd been on the cusp of puberty at his death and this uncharacteristic display of emotion is playing havoc with vocal cords already obnoxiously predisposed to cracking.

"You did not know my sire; she died while you were still...doing whatever it was you did on the Continent. Millicent had her killed. I swore vengeance for Aurelia's death, and for the deaths of my progeny following my own overthrow." That, having happened more recently, Jean-Claude would know about. "I don't know why she continued to spare my life. She had no such pity for those I loved."

And that word, more than the tears or anything else, is completely unlike the vampire Joscelin has been in his many hundreds of years on the planet. He hasn't admitted feelings of love for anyone since the sixteenth century.

Nor, it must be noted, will he ever again.

Edited 2016-06-16 03:57 (UTC)

Jean-Claude nods. Yes, he has heard that. He knows that, in fact. Just as he knows who it is that managed to kill her. Or who it is that was supposed to have tried, at least. Perhaps he should have tried harder to talk her out of it, he thinks to himself, as he watches how much it has affected his friend here. Perhaps he should have tried harder to ensure that Joscelin were to get his revenge. But he knows in truth that no matter who would have done the deed, it would not have helped him. It would not have brought those people back for him. In truth, it doesn't make a person feel that much different in the end, to be able to seek out their revenge or not.

He stands, tall, still and silent as he regards the other vampire for a long moment before he bends to take the other vampire in his arms in an embrace. "I am sorry, mon ami," he says, quietly, offering what little comfort he can in what little time the other vampire will allow him to do so.

Joscelin accepts the embrace, letting his tense little body relax for the first time in ages--but only for a moment. After a few breaths, once he can trust himself to not dissolve into such an embarrassing, emotional spectacle again, he pushes away.

"Get the fuck off of me."

Jean-Claude steps away as he is told to do so, raising his hands in front of him in something of a defensive gesture, to show that he will keep his hands to himself. He does not regret his action, however. He knows that it is probably the first embrace that the other vampire has had in some time, and he recognizes that for a fraction of a second, he had even admitted to himself that he needed it.

"I am sorry, mon ami," he says, although he is not very sorry at all. "Here. Please, let me take you home." Wherever he is calling home these days, Jean-Claude realizes after a moment that he isn't quite certain where that might be.

A hollow laugh. "What home? Rents being what they are in London these days, it is a bit difficult to find a flat in a suitably fashionable part of town that will sell a mortgage to a twelve year old, no matter how much money I have in the bank. I've been at the Nest most days, but..." Joss shrugs eloquently. "While I imagine Millicent's death has gone a long way to rehabilitate my image, I find have no stomach for power vacuums. We're going back to your place."

He attempts to tidy himself as much as is possible, given all of the blood. It's starting to dry in sticky clumps in his hair. A bath is very much in order.

Jean-Claude nods slightly, having anticipated something like that from the other vampire. "My place, then," Jean-Claude agrees. "Let us not linger in this place for any longer than we must, mon ami. Come."

He gestures them forward. It will be a big of a walk, but he does not think that the other vampire will mind it, given the mood he is in. And what with the state of the pair of them, it's smarter to take to the streets and the shadows than to hope that whatever transportation they could procure might not ask too many questions.

It isn't all that hard to find Joscelin, the way it isn't so hard to guess who's behind it. The bite, smaller than her own and she isn't a large woman, and the ferocity. While a trail of bodies is growing disturbingly common in the current climate, Natasha's still a pretty good idea who she's going to find.

And she's not entirely surprised by where she finds him, either. There's a familiarity about the orphanage that leaves her with a flat, cold feeling.

Natasha walks onto the scene with her hands in her pockets, arms close to her body as though she's colder than the night and her state warrant. Her expression is neutral. She doesn't look at Joscelin immediately, though she comes to stop nearby, her heeled boots clicking softly on the pavement. "You can't really think this is a good idea."

Whether she means the killing he's already done, or whatever she imagines he's planning, she doesn't clarify.

Edited 2016-06-09 04:01 (UTC)

"It depends on your definition of a good idea, really," Joscelin replies with his usual forced nonchalance, though there's a brittle edge to his voice that he can't quite mask. His eyes are wide and a little too bright; he's still riding the high of his last kill. "It gets a bit lonely, being simultaneously the oldest and youngest vampire in the city. Haven't I earned the right to a bit of company?"

The boy laughs. His fangs are already out. "We seem to be riding a tide of spectacularly bad ideas in London lately. Let's just add this one to the pile."

"You'd still be lonely," Natasha says. She's not tossing aside her caution, but considering the stakes—not just the cost to the children, but the cost to the city with more child vampires—it's worth a little more risk than she'd take under normal circumstances with a vampire his age. "Turning them won't make you any younger."

She pulls her arms out of her pockets and crosses them over her chest then, shaking her head a little. Not for the first time, she thinks of just why it's cruel to turn children so young. Her own sire had chosen her in her early twenties and waited years to finally turn her, finding even that too young.

"Besides, you're smarter than that. No one lives to be your age thinking that way. As bad as things already are... you really want to make them worse?"

After that, Natasha falls quiet. She can only hope that age has taught him pragmatism. The two things tended to go together, but there were always exceptions, and always changes for old vampires to grow decadent.

"I sired seventeen vampires between 1680 and 1896." Joscelin says it suddenly, angrily. "Millicent had them killed in front of me, one by one, to punish me for my insolence. Then she stripped me of my rank and of my sire's ring and banished me from the Nest for one hundred and twenty years. I do not need the pity of a moralizing infant who cannot even bring herself to drink human blood."

He's in full froth now. His hand rests on the wooden stake he carries in his pocket--a warning.

"Do not forget to whom you speak, madam. Despite my shape, I am no child. I've killed many for less than this."

Natasha doesn't flinch, her chin rising a notch and her expression suddenly smooth and stoic as porcelain. She risked this when she decided to say what she did; she wanted his attention and she wasn't going to cower because she got it.

"If you think this is pity, then you don't know me very well." Her gaze doesn't even flick toward the implicit threat in his pocket. Even if she were well-fed, she wouldn't have had a chance facing him head on. She had killed vampires nearly as old before, but always with careful preparation. And that wasn't something she was about to advertise. "I'm just calling it like I see it. Turning yourself a bunch of kids isn't going to make you any happier or any less lonely, and whatever's going through your head, I think you're smart enough to know that the trouble this would bring down on all of us isn't worth the payoff."

The compliment is backhanded but intentional.

"But if I'm wrong on any particular point?"

Joscelin is used to his threats getting a reaction, but this isn't the one he'd intended. Natasha doesn't flinch or back down or apologize or even show the slightest twinge of fear. Instead, she continues to be damnably, infuriatingly, reasonable. Joss wants to rip her throat out and see how she likes her moral superiority then; he wants to make her suffer for a few hours while her blood-starved body struggles to repair the damage.

But Joss hasn't survived this long by acting on every impulse he's ever had. He takes a deep breath and replies, in a measured way, "Your opinion on the matter was neither requested nor welcomed, but it's been noted. Now go poke your nose somewhere else it doesn't belong while I am still feeling charitable."

If Natasha's sire had lived longer, or if the Red Room vampires had been less inclined to indulge her in the wake of his death (so long as she was still a valuable weapon and stayed out of politics, so long as she kept her disrespect in to the bedroom and social sphere where it could be considered amusing), maybe Natasha would have showed more deference. Or maybe not. Alexei had valued respect and discipline, and while he'd expected her submission, it had never taken the form of cowering.

Natasha's posture shifts, crossing her arms behind her back and bowing her head halfway. There's something vaguely military about the stance. And finally the impression of bending to authority, even if in a controlled way.

She should take the opportunity to escape. Instead, she lingers. She's not sure he's let go of the idea of turning anyone tonight, and there's still the matter of the other bodies. No amount of confrontation is going to bring them back to life, but dodging out doesn't clean up the mess either.

Joscelin notes the change in Natasha's demeanor with an approving glance. She's brave, still standing there after her very obvious dismissal. Foolhardy, maybe. But he respects that, despite his frustration with her insistence on being honorable (she's a vampire--what reason has she for honor?). Time was, he might have used her.

But not now.

"Have you anything more to say, Ms. Romanoff?"

"No, I suppose not." She might be foolhardy, but she's here to minimize damage. Not to pick fights. If he's set on a course of action, she won't be able to stop him—and if she's appealed to his sense of reason, she won't do any good by adding to the argument.

That does leave one last thing, though.

"There's still a mess to clean up." Someone has to get rid of the bodies he's left behind. Him and others. She won't be able to get all of them—and she doesn't intend to try. But there's too many to just leave to be found.

"Indeed." Joscelin raises an eyebrow at her. "So you'd better get started cleaning, Ms. Romanoff."

He isn't going to help her with that.

She can only give half a wince to his response. She didn't hope for better, though. However brave she might be, Natasha's pushed about as far as she's willing to for today. She inclines her head slightly, an empty acknowledgement, before she slinks off to clean up his messes.

Cooper is a bit further down the hall, staring much more intently at an old drawing than any teenager in a museum has the right to be. The drawing is entitled Hanging of a United Irishman 1798. He remembers the scene quite well. The British had found a sadistic pleasure in torturing their victims that way, trying to break their spirits before killing them. It hadn't worked on Cooper, too full of anger and rebellious nature to be kept down, even when he was condemned to death.

Sighing, he turns and walks towards Joss, absentmindedly twisting the daylight ring on his finger around and around. He stands and looks at the portrait for a moment, head cocked, as if observing it from purely an art-lover's standpoint. "If ever there was a place for ghosts to haunt, this would be it."

"Ghosts get bored," Joscelin counters, not even turning to acknowledge the other vampire. There's no need; they both know what they are. "Churchyards may be remarkably cliché, but at least they've got company. Museums are lonely places for the dead."

He gestures towards the painting.

"Aurelia Vipsania, wife of Flavius Postumius Drusus, merchant of Londinum. Though she was going by Aurelia de Bretagne by the time this was painted. My sire."

"She looks pretty. Kinda haughty too." Never speak ill of the dead went the common saying. Cooper had never taken it to heart. The dead were dead, and unless they rose from the grave, he would speak of them as he wished.

"I never knew mine. They took off before my body was even cold." He sounds more than just a little bitter. Some might have found it easier never to have a sire at all, but not Cooper. Going it alone had very nearly been the death of the vampire in his younger years.

Joss snorts. "So did she, though not intentionally. I toddled off too quickly for her to collect me from the plague pit." Why is he saying all this? His history is not necessarily uncommon knowledge, but he doesn't go around spouting it to random Irish strangers.

He straightens. "I'm showing my age. My apologies." The perfunctory way he says it implies that he doesn't apologize at all. "I'm not usually this soppy and nostalgic."

Cooper is unusually quiet as he listens, none of his usual sarcasm or interrupting commentary to be found. He's nowhere near as old as Joss, yet the weight of the past hangs heavy around him. He thinks part of him got left up there on the gallows, never to return again.

He considers his words carefully before answering Joss. "I don't think it's nostalgic to talk about the ones we've lost. It's natural t'miss people and eras that have passed us by. They say you're never truly dead until the last person who remembers you is dead 'n gone too. If that's true, some people will live forever."

Joscelin's smile twists ironically.

"So shall we all, provided we don't meet the same end as Millicent."

He takes a small flask from his jacket pocket; it contains a bit of blood from his last kill. He passes it to the other vampire.

"Your good health, my friend."

"Here's t'hoping I live as long as you. Never thought I'd make it as long as I have, truth be told." Cooper casts a glance around, making sure there's no overenthusiastic security guard around to tell him off for what will look like from a distance as being underage drinking. Seeing that they're almost alone in this part of the hall, he takes a long swig before passing the flask back to Joss. Cold blood. Brrr. He much prefers it warm, flowing, and preferably being drunk from a beautiful redhead.

"You've been around a while, seen the way the wind tends t'blow. How long d'you think our new glorious leader can keep ahold of the nest before it all goes to shit?"

"Not long."

Joscelin isn't entirely sure why he's talking to the other vampire. He's young, barely a couple of centuries old, and just a little too interested in what Joss seems to think, but he also seems to understand his place in the hierarchy, which is a rarity for those of the younger generation. That, at least, is gratifying.

"Raymond is an opportunist and will keep the Nest in line for a matter of months, maybe a year or two, but soon the novelty will wear off. Vampires admire brutality, of course, but war against the wolves is hardly politick. It's not like the old days when we could just go around killing as we please. There will be consequences."

There certainly had been for Joscelin when he'd done the same.

Well, perhaps one of the reasons is that the younger vampire is willing to treat Joscelin with respect as the older one is warranted. He too knows how some in the nest tend not to take him seriously just because he was turned at a young age. Cooper sighs at Joss' predictions for the nest and runs a hand through his fair hair. It's getting long in the back. He needs a trim. "I was afraid you were gonna say that."

He frowns and something dark surfaces in his eyes. "I haven't work my way up to lose it all just 'cause he feels like throwing a blood kegger without end." Cooper was not a patient man. He had waited to see what would happen to Millicent and look how that had turned out. At this rate, he could end up waiting another hundred years before Harris got deposed.

Worked my way up. Joscelin understands that particular sentiment. He, too, worked his way up, tried to play political games and had lost resoundingly. But even that hadn't prevented him from trying again, from coming back to the Nest after over a century and aligning himself with Coward. And for what? Coward is gone, Millicent is dead, and a madman is in charge.

"Why have you worked your way up? What do you seek to achieve?"

Now there's a question to make him pause. Not many have ever asked just what Cooper was doing there in the nest, slowly and unobtrusively working his way up the ranks. He always figured nobody took him seriously, hot-headed and blunt as he was. "Well, I've never been much of a leader. Don't have much of the heart for the job. But I'm damn good at bein' second-in-command."

A position that could sometimes hold even greater value than being the head of anything. The man standing behind the leader could pull strings and manipulate things without too much worry of someone looking at him for too long. He'd held the position before in a nest far away in America and now he sought to regain it once more.

Joscelin can't help a derisive laugh.

"God's wounds," he swears. It's like I'm listening to myself. Hadn't this been his exact plan? Hitch his flag to Coward and become his lieutenant? Of course, his plan had also included killing Coward later down the line and taking all the power for himself, but that doesn't need to be mentioned. Vampire politics can be rather shockingly predictable. He's quite sure Coward had been preparing for just such a contingency before his baffling self-removal from the field. He would have been a terrible leader if he hadn't.

"A little advice from your elder, boy: wait for a candidate who is worthy of your pains. When someone inevitably takes Harris out, those closest to him will also fall."

Cooper frowns a little at Joscelin's laugh, not sure what precisely is so amusing about his comments. His plan seems secure to him. That was the great advantage of being himself. Nobody would ever suspect the vampire of wanting much more than a warm body to feed off of and someone he could occasionally pick a fight with. His ambitions were much greater than that.

"And what're your plans for the future? You didn't come back after this long just t'sit on the sidelines and watch the game pass you on by." He's heard the stories of what Joss had gotten up to before back in the day. With the ban on child vampires lifted, he can't help but wonder if he would be up to his old tricks again.

"I'm not 'letting the game' pass me by, as you so charmingly put it," Joscelin replies a little coyly (but still with the smugly superior tone he's used throughout much of the conversation). He's not about to spill his secrets to a near stranger just because the other vampire caught him at a slightly more vulnerable moment. That would be suicide, even if he actually were one to share. Which he isn't.

"My plans are my own; I've no intentions of sharing them. But I will say this: I'm not about to let myself get overly involved in the current state of affairs. Millicent was a tyrant in the purely classical sense. Her jealous protection of power was dictatorial and overly restrictive, but effective. Raymond Harris is the Caligula to her Augustus, as much as it pains me to speak well of the dead. I have not lived seven centuries just to allow myself to fall under the sway of such a pitiful amateur."

"Fair enough." He twists the daylight ring around on his finger again. It was a symbol of all that he had gained and all that he could lose if he took a risk and lost.

"Just don't wait too long t'do whatever it is you plan to do. Like I said, the wind's blowin' one direction right now. Won't stay that way for long by your own estimation." He didn't sound either like he condoned or condemned what it was that Joss had on his mind. The old vampire was a wildcard when it came to the deck of vampires. Cooper knew it was players like him that kept the game from getting too boring.

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She's not so special so look what you've done boy

It's with your sins you've killed me

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Thinking of your sins I die

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