but there was no sound, there was only me and my disgrace

[iustitiae]

closed to natasha, august 16
The strange thing is, the numbness sets in first. Before the panic, before the fear. He's starting to wonder what being with these people is doing to him. But the clarity is almost worse. After the first murder, the night after had been a huge blur, the anxiety eating out all of the memories, making them fuzzy and unfocused and all that was left was the imprint of the intense feelings, but not the specifics. This clarity though...the blood on his hands was going to be there for a long time.

But he knows how to get away with murder, and he knows how to solve this problem. That's what he was always doing, solving problems for other people, but this time he has no one to blame for himself. So he swallows his nausea and cleans up the crime scene.

And then...And then...

The sickness starts to set in and the anxiety and the tension and he hates himself too much to be alone with himself. He needs someone else, and even while the loathing tells him he doesn't deserve it, logic knows he needs it. He seeks out Natasha. She's the only person who is stable enough to deal with the bizarre shit he's been dealing with. The only person he can trust with this information without it hurting her.

"I...Natasha, I need to talk."



open, august 18
Do you know what today is? Do you? Here I'll key you in - it's the full moon. And everyone's new favorite baby werewolf is finding out the hard way what that means for the first time. At least he's smart - he's not sure he's really going to transform (but he can feel it, and he knows it instinctively and that's kind of creepy to him), but he's not about to hang around somewhere he can fuck things up more than he has. So here we are, a little before sundown, and he's just chilling in the forest, stashing an extra pair of clothes behind a tree (look, he's seen werewolf movies before), and biding his sweet time before he turns into a giant hungry dog, or whatever.



open, august 19
The morning after, but not the fun kind. At least he's got the Walk of Shame™ thing down, yesterday's clothes secretly stuffed in a briefcase, today's clothes only slightly tousled and only slightly woodland-tingled (a leaf here, some dirt on the cuffs on his pants, no big deal). He looks like a very hung over, very much needing coffee, normal millenial though, by all other counts. He's pretty sure he didn't kill anyone last night so while he's exhausted, he's also pretty happy. What a world, that that's something to be excited about.

Comments

[outstandingbalance]

Natasha isn't hard to find. Most nights, she's at Redbright or the area around it. That's not something she's made a secret of. She doesn't hide it, and one of the reasons she doesn't is situations like this—where someone might need to find her.

She wishes she could be surprised that it's Connor who comes looking.

Taking one long, searching look over the young man, Natasha has the sinking feeling that she knows where this is going. Her brows and her lips draw together n a concerned frown. "Yeah," she says. "All right. How about we take a walk?"

She can practically see the anxious energy coming off him in waves. Moving might give him an outlet for that while he tells her what's happened now.

[iustitiae]

"Sure, yeah." He nods hurriedly and waits for her to get her coat or whatever she needs, trying not to just pace. Walking was definitely a good idea.

"I don't think I'm going to be okay," he says finally, once they've started walking and have gotten a good enough pace away from Redbright. He's silent before that. This is the first thing he says.

[outstandingbalance]

That is certainly one way to start this conversation She walks beside him, setting a comfortable pace. She doesn't head anywhere particular, just picks a direction and goes. How Connor looks, she doesn't think the destination matters much.

"That's ominous," she observes softly. "You want to talk about it?"

[iustitiae]

"I do," Connor sighs heavily. He wants to talk, but words get tight and caught in his throat. He knows how this part goes, how the anxiety fights back and claws at your insides to keep you silent. But he'd also never intended to tell Oliver anything when he'd seen him after the first time. He wants to tell Natasha.

But he doesn't assume this will be without consequence. Surely the supernaturals had their own system of law and order that they followed. He hadn't bothered to care enough, not even with all the election drama, but he realizes he should have been. Now he's just thinking in what ifs, and what ifs were never good.

It'll take him a moment.

"That's why I came here, but I..." but it's hard. It's always so hard.

[outstandingbalance]

"No rush," Natasha says. She almost tells him that it's all right, but clearly that's not the case. It seems to be in bad taste, even understanding the words would have meant only as comfort. "I don't have anywhere I have to be until dawn."

So he can take as much time as he needs.

She almost wishes she knew more werewolves. There'd been Alex, but she was gone. Before her, she'd met another werewolf working at Redbright, but only once and for only a few moments before he'd gone back to Russia—the irony in that hadn't been lost on her. Neither of them were around now to send a brand new werewolf to for advice.

Because Natasha assumes that's where this is going. She doesn't know for sure, but given the context, given the evidence such as it is, she's confident making that inference.

"How about if we start with what happened?"

[iustitiae]

No werewolves to turn to for advice, but enough to still turn people into werewolves. That's how it always was, wasn't it? Enough people to break things, never enough to fix them.

"I guess, I stupidly believed that I could be free from -- from all of this if I just tried," if he just didn't act like a monster. If he just didn't kill. "But it's like...the whole goddamn universe has it in for me that I have to be involved."

[outstandingbalance]

"Sometimes it seems that way," Natasha says mildly. "So I'm guessing that something came up that made it hard not to act like a monster."

It had already been obvious that he'd killed someone. The only real questions was how and why.

[iustitiae]

"Yeah, something like that." Connor isn't sure how much he wants or can tell her at this point, but it's really enough that she hasn't gotten rid of him, even with all the implications here. "Why does it have to be like this?"

[outstandingbalance]

Natasha snorts softly. Oddly enough, the sound comes from a cynical kind of sympathy. She's wondered that sort of thing before, in the moments when it feels like everything before she was turned was only carrying her to that point.

"It just ends up like this," she says softly. "But once it's happened, there's not much going back."

[iustitiae]

Natasha would know, of course. He doesn't know how long she's been a vampire, but he suspects it's a pretty long time with how calm she was around everything. It wasn't fair. Sometimes he thinks vampires have it worse.

(If they would just stop being such assholes about the whole werewolf thing, though. It makes it very hard to be sympathetic.)

"Things have been fucked up for a long time." It's selfish. His long time is nothing compared to hers. But it doesn't matter, he's always going to see things from his perspective.

[outstandingbalance]

Natasha is willing not to be competitive about whose situation is worse. That doesn't seem like a game anyone wins.

"I don't doubt that." Going from haunted to cursed wasn't exactly moving up in the world either, it was true. "It's probably not going to get less fucked up any time soon, either. But it can get better."

[iustitiae]

"Better, how?" he asks, tone incredulous. He doesn't think there's getting much better from this.

[outstandingbalance]

Natasha sighs. She knows her answer isn't the one he wants to hear, and she doesn't blame him for that. Unfortunately, it's the answer that she has. "You learn to adapt."

[iustitiae]

She's right, it's not. But it's the answer that seems inevitable. "So what, I become the alpha puppy?"

[outstandingbalance]

"If you have alpha in you," Natasha says with a shrug. Maybe he does. It's not the kind of dominance that she's normally seen in wolves, but there are different ways to take charge and wolves are different from vampires.

[iustitiae]

"Kinky," he replies, winking at her. At least making jokes was something of a good sign, though his morbid sense of humor had definitely won out at some truly lower points, too.

[outstandingbalance]

"That's the spirit," Natasha responds dryly, a faint smile playing around her lips. It's weak, though; she understands that kind of humor, and she doesn't take it for a sign he's okay. Maybe that he will be okay given time, but he's not there yet.

[iustitiae]

"All of this is such a mess," he can tell she doesn't believe it's better and that's fine. He came to her for emotions or something so at least she was letting him have the space to do it. It was a double-edged sword, but it was probably what he needed. "Maybe I should just turn myself over to the supernatural police or something."

[outstandingbalance]

"I don't think that would turn out real well for anyone." She shakes her head, giving him a sideways glance. "Will it do any good if I tell you to keep your head down?"

[iustitiae]

Right again. It wouldn't be good for anyone - and if they start unraveling the strings of how badly he's fucked up, he'd probably end up pulling down everyone with him. "No, that's. Probably the best." He doesn't expect it though. Good people were supposed to turn themselves in, weren't they? I mean -- good people weren't supposed to do this at all but barring that and with existing circumstances as they were...wasn't the right answer supposed to be go to the cops? It's a counsel he's not expecting, not from Natasha. Maybe he should have, she's a vampire. She's probably had her share of strange kills.